Rapid evaluation of the design and manufacture of cooling systems of photovoltaic solar panels

Almeshaiei, E., Al-Habaibeh, A. ORCID: 0000-0002-9867-6011, Mina, N. and Akib, S. ORCID: 0000-0002-6538-0716, 2022. Rapid evaluation of the design and manufacture of cooling systems of photovoltaic solar panels. International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing. ISSN 1955-2513

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Abstract

A new methodology is presented in this paper to encourage the growth of renewable energy technologies in hot and arid countries. PV solar panels are characterized by a decrease in efficiency with the increase in temperatures. This means in hot sunny countries, the actual output will decrease, affecting the power output despite the high availability of sun irradiation. In order to address this issue, a new methodology has been developed and presented in this paper to support system's designers and manufacturers; which allows rapid testing and assessment of the design in consistent way within a short period of time. The approach, named Rapid Evaluation of Solar panels Cooling (RESC), is novel as it combines rapid laboratory testing, with in-situ experimental data to evaluate the cooling technologies that are integrated into solar panels. Modular and scalable designs of passive (chimney effect) and active (fan) cooling methods were tested. The results show that the suggested approach is successful in comparing between the cooling technologies to assess their performance and the payback period within a short period of time. Carbon savings are also calculated for the suggested cooling technologies. The results show that the best energy performance was found to be for the fan-cooled system with overall 12.3% improvement in annual energy output. However, when compared to the payback period on financial investment, the passive cooling is found to more appealing. The key advantage of cooling technologies is found to be in producing an additional significant level of power during summer days when the surface temperature of the panel is at 70 °C or above. Hence, in such conditions, the cooling process could result in an increase in power output of about 53.15% relative to the uncooled standard panels. List of symbols P m Power at maximum level of solar cell or panel I m Current at maximum power point V m Voltage at maximum power point F F Fill factor I SC Short circuit current V OC Open circuit voltage β re f Temperature coefficient T o The elevated temperature at which the PV efficiency is zero

Item Type:	Journal article
Publication Title:	International Journal on Interactive Design and Manufacturing
Creators:	Almeshaiei, E., Al-Habaibeh, A., Mina, N. and Akib, S.
Publisher:	Springer
Date:	22 December 2022
ISSN:	1955-2513
Identifiers:	Number Type 10.1007/s12008-022-01161-z DOI 1629990 Other
Rights:	© the author(s) 2022. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Divisions:	Schools > School of Architecture, Design and the Built Environment
Record created by:	Jonathan Gallacher
Date Added:	03 Jan 2023 11:03
Last Modified:	03 Jan 2023 11:03
URI:	https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/47703

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