Enhancing Monocrystalline Solar Module Efficiency through Front-Surface Cooling with 96% Alcohol

Abstract

Electrical energy generation in solar modules is mainly limited by the increase in their temperature, and a heat removal process plays an important role. The main goal of the experiment was to keep the temperature of the cooled module below 47 °C through a series of the five short cooling and heating cycles and to determine the changes in the solar module output power during the cooling process with 96% ethyl alcohol. The optimal duration of the cooling cycles was determined to be between 3–6 min and for the heating process, it was 4–5 min. During the heating and cooling cycles the temperature of the cooled module did not exceed 42.1 °C. At the end of five active cooling cycles the temperature difference of 22.6 °C was achieved. The biggest difference in power between the cooled and uncooled module was 4.9%. The solar module efficiency was increased by 3.2%. It was concluded that alcohol, due to its evaporative losses, is not a viable cooling agent for solar modules. Nevertheless, it can serve as a potent additive in both active and passive cooling systems to augment the output power of solar modules.

Analysis of the Factors Influencing the Performance of Single- and Multi-Diode PV Solar Modules

“…The shunt resistance cares for the leakage current to the ground in a practical PV cell. As per [2], [7], [11][12][13][14] the accuracy of the model depends on the number of solar cells connected in a module, fill factor, and efficiency [11,15].…”

“…The factors included in this paper are cooling [12], temperature coefficient [13,14], the material effect [15], parasitic resistance [13,14,20] different which make it a little more complex than the single-diode model [8], but at lower temperature two diode model can withstand better, which act as an advantage [9]. diode drops highlighted above, internal losses and voltage drops caused by the inflow of current in a PV cell are represented in the model by the series resistance [8].…”

“…The performance of a PV module depends on many factors which play an essential role in obtaining the desired output. The factors included in this paper are fill factor [11], cooling [12], temperature coefficient [13,14], the material resistance [13,14,20] different interconnections [16,17,18], degradation of PV module [19], soiling [11,12,13,14,20], a variation in solar irradiation [13,14,21], the shading effect [13,14,20,22],…”

“…Some of the research finding in terms of performance are illustrated below: Water spraying with coal decreases efficiency [11]. Cooling can provide an average 9.64% enhancement in efficiency [12]. Maximum power decreases with values between 0.14% and 0.47% if the temperature increases by 1°C for the photovoltaic cells [13,14].…”

“…A bypass diode is used in parallel to avoid damage to the cell/panel/model [22]. Few researchers have given some solutions to improve the efficiency of the panel, by using the colling technique [11], cleaning the panels properly [11], allowing airflow gaps [12], changing the configuration of the panel [18], Avoid Shadows [22], adding a PCM layer [23], Anti-reflective coating [24], changing the optimal angle of the solar collector [25] and Schedule Preventive Checks these all solutions can increase the efficiency of the PV generation. Table I represents the finding of research done in this field of diode model and performance analysis.…”