Experimental Investigation of Solar Panel Cooling by a Novel Micro Heat Pipe Array

A novel micro heat pipe array was used in solar panel cooling. Both of air-cooling and water-cooling conditions under nature convection condition were investigated in this paper. Compared with the ordinary solar panel, the maximum difference of the photoelectric conversion efficiency is 2.6%, the temperature reduces maximally by 4.7℃, the output power increases maximally by 8.4% for the solar panel with heat pipe using air-cooling, when the daily radiation value is 26.3 MJ. Compared with the solar panel with heat pipe using air-cooling, the maximum difference of the photoelectric conversion efficiency is 3%, the temperature reduces maximally by 8℃, the output power increases maximally by 13.9% for the solar panel with heat pipe using water-cooling, when the daily radiation value is 21.9 MJ.

[1]  W. G. Anderson,et al.  Heat pipe cooling of concentrating photovoltaic cells , 2008, 2008 33rd IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference.

[2]  Aliakbar Akbarzadeh,et al.  Heat pipe-based cooling systems for photovoltaic cells under concentrated solar radiation , 1996 .

[3]  K. Araki,et al.  A simple passive cooling structure and its heat analysis for 500/spl times/ concentrator PV module , 2002, Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2002..

[4]  M. Farahat,et al.  Improvement the thermal electric performance of a photovoltaic cells by cooling and concentration techniques , 2004, 39th International Universities Power Engineering Conference, 2004. UPEC 2004..

[5]  B. Karlsson,et al.  Low-concentrating water-cooled PV-thermal hybrid systems for high latitudes , 2002, Conference Record of the Twenty-Ninth IEEE Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 2002..

[6]  Tin-Tai Chow,et al.  Hybrid photovoltaic and thermal solar-collector designed for natural circulation of water , 2006 .