Improving thermodynamic performance parameters of silicon photovoltaic cells via air cooling

A numerical and experimental study based on analysing the cooling effect on performance characteristics of silicon solar cells is presented. In the experiments carried out for different cell temperatures, a substantial decrease in power output with increasing cell temperature was observed depending on the decrease in exergy efficiency. In contrast to the remarkable decrease in voltage parameters, a slight increase in current parameters with increasing cell temperature was obtained. A well-known computational fluid dynamics software was utilised to evaluate the effectiveness of cooling applications in terms of enhancement of energy conversion in silicon solar cells. Air was chosen as the cooling fluid in the numerical study. The numerical study was performed for various velocities and temperatures of cooling fluid. Enhancement in energy conversion was determined for each operating condition. The results indicated that cooling applications are quite important to improve the efficiency and the maximum power output of the photovoltaic modules. These strategies can be more efficient for large-scale photovoltaic power plants.

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