Effective thermal management of photovoltaic modules equipped with innovative concentrating techniques

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

International Journal of Sustainable Engineering

Abstract

Due to growing apprehension about energy density in Photovoltaics (PV), researchers have proposed multiple concentrators and thermal-management techniques. In the present study, based on system operation and power output, two designs are proposed: compound parabolic collector (CPC) based PV (PV-CPC) and Fresnel lens-based PV (PV-FNL). A gravity-assisted evaporative cooling system in PV-CPC resulted in 7.1 ℃ to 11.2 ℃ temperature drop, which led to 13.1% to 26.1% improvement in power output. A higher fill factor (0.72 compared to 0.65 for reference model) also complements the system design, which had minimum tracking. Further, owing to both electrical and thermal outputs, the PV-FNL model is suggested, which had an effective forced cooling. Significant improvement in module power output (46% to 59%) followed by useful heat gain (500 W with water exit temperature as ≈ 95 ℃) upholds the efficacy of the proposed system. However, the low fill factor (0.49) indicates an additional cooling requirement. Though the results are promising, enviroeconomic and life cycle analysis of PV-CPC and PV-FNL is worth gauging for in-field applications. Even, in PV-FNL configuration, the multi-junction cell-based module and CPC integrated thermal receiver can fetch better and more reliable results.

DOI

10.1080/19397038.2025.2484219

Publication Date

1-1-2025

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS