Investigation of photovoltaic modules cooling system

Abstract

It is well known that the power and efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) module usually falls at the rate of ~0.5%/°C and ~0.05%/°C respectively as increase of ambient temperature. The electrical efficiency of PV cell depends on its operating temperature during absorption of solar radiation. A solar system was designed, fabricated and experimentally investigated in this work. To actively cool the PV panel, a DC brushless fan with inlet/outlet manifold designed for uniform airflow distribution was attached at the back of the PV panel. Experiments were performed with and without active cooling. In this study, the open-circuit voltage (Voc) of PV module, solar irradiance and temperature on PV panel were recorded every single minute. In the end, method to attach DC brushless fan to the backside of PV module is discussed. This work shows the comparison between a PV module with and without DC brushless fan.