Experimental investigation on the abasement of operating temperature in solar photovoltaic panel using PCM and aluminium

Abstract The inevitable growth of solar panel systems depicts the importance of improving its efficiency. The incident solar radiation on Photo Voltaic (PV) panel is partially converted into power, which means only some of it gets converted into heat energy. Since the rise in temperature of PV panel has a negative effect on efficiency, several cooling methods were proposed by researchers so far. Among all the proposals, PV panel with Phase Changing Material (PCM) provides maximum power by reducing the operating temperature of the panel. The low thermal conductivity nature of PCM makes use of thermal enhancers. Researchers found several such Thermal Conductivity Enhancers (TCE) for PCMs. The proposed work focuses on a novel technique for enhancing the efficiency of the solar PV panel with the PCM and the aluminium sheet as TCE. This approach has been experimented naturally under direct sun rays for three months and observed results of 2 days are attached. The experiment has been conducted using two 5 W panels, and the results of the PV-PCM entrenched with aluminium panel is compared with naturally ventilated panel without PCM and aluminium. It is experimentally verified that, PV-PCM with aluminium sheet at the backside of panel has improved the conversion efficiency of the panel by an average of 24.4%. For an average decrease in temperature of 10.35 °C, the electrical efficiency of the panel is increased 2%. In the further examination, by using FLIR thermal imaging camera, the sensitivity of PCM thermal regulation and the electrical efficiency at various time instants have also been tabulated. While using this proposed cooling method, the results of FLIR images show a maximum decrease in temperature of 13 °C for the Day 1 and 7.7 °C for the Day 2.

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