Fabrication, experimental study and testing of a novel photovoltaic module for photovoltaic thermal applications

Abstract

a b s t r a c tSolar Photovoltaic Thermal (PV/T) System is the integration of Solar Photovoltaic (PV) module and thermal system to serve the dual purpose of providing electricity and hot water/air simultaneously. But the high thermal resistance in a PV/T collector due to the thermal conductive adhesive, sheet and tube metal absorber reduces the heat transfer from the PV cells to the fluid and increases the overall cost of the system. This causes non-uniform and inefficient cooling of the PV cells. Hence, in this paper, a solar photovoltaic thermal module was developed by laminating a thin, flat copper sheet instead of Tedlar as the bottom layer. This modification is then integrated to a single water channel to make a PV/T collector. Primary energy saving efficiency of 35.32% was obtained at 0.01 kg/s mass flow rate, whereas the reference PV module attained only 20.87%. Theoretical calculations using material properties of the different layers of PV/T module and PV module showed a decrease in thermal resistance and an increase in thermal capacitance compared to the PV module. Also discussed in this paper was the positive results of few conformance tests conducted on the PV/T module according to IEC standards.

Methods for the development and testing of polymeric hybrid photovoltaic thermal (PVT) collector for indoor experiments

“…Chen and Yin [23] developed and constructed a building integrated photovoltaic-thermal (BIPVT) multifunctional roofing to harvest solar energy in the form of PV electricity as well as heat energy through the collection of warm water. Michael et al [24] developed the PVT module without any mechanical welding and tested in outdoor conditions that the electrical efficiency of the PV module and PVT module showed similar performance. The details of the fabrication and integration method for the PVT collector are summarized in Table 1 below.…”

“…Michael et al [24] developed the PVT module without any mechanical welding and tested in outdoor conditions that the electrical efficiency of the PV module and PVT module showed similar performance. The details of the fabrication and integration method for the PVT collector are summarized in Table 1 below.…”

Energy assessment and monitoring of a novel photovoltaic‐thermal collector designed for solar‐assisted heat pump systems

“…According to the experimental results, such a technique can provide a lower thermal resistance between PV and metal absorber [4] and thus better electrical and thermal performances [13]. Although such a manufacturing process can be considered promising, until now, few research papers show experimental results of PVT directly laminated in operative conditions [24].…”

Hybrid Photovoltaic/Thermal (HPV/T) Systems: From Theory to Applications

“…HPV/T systems are tested under different ambient conditions and optimized with different algorithms (Nahar et al, 2017;Singh et al, 2015a;Singh and Agrawal, 2015;Michael et al, 2016). Kumar and Rosen (2011a) perform a parametric study on the double-pass HPV/T collector with vertical fins to investigate effects of several variables, namely design, ambient and operating conditions, cell temperature on the overall performance of the system.…”

“…They observe that mass flow rate has slight effect on the air temperature. Hot water or air can be produced by using HPV/T based on the demand of the application (Michael et al, 2016). Guo et al (2015) present HPV/T collector which has two operation modes namely, water heating mode and air heating mode.…”