Heating Behavior of Photovoltaic Panels and Front Side Water Cooling Efficiency

Abstract

The use of solar energy is very promising for favorable Sun Belt countries. However, in these regions the hot climate leads to high temperatures which conduct to significant power losses in photovoltaic panels. In this paper we study the heating behavior of photovoltaic panels and front side water cooling efficiency. A standalone cooling system is designed as prototype which helps to proposal for a methodology for large-scale application through energy estimation of this system. Two typical situations were studied: the first one with a uniform distribution of the temperature and the second one with a non-uniform distribution of temperature under partial shadowing leading to hot spot effect. The gain in electrical power with cooling is about 45% in the case of a non-uniform distribution compared to 12% in the case of a uniform distribution at 30°C outdoor temperature. It was also noticed that temperature on hot spot point depends of the shadow type (direct and indirect). The estimation of the supplement of energy obtained from the cooling system demonstrates that the cooling system used in this study will be beneficial with using of string of PV panels with a minimum of three panels. This makes the autonomous cooling system very efficient.