Numerical and Experimental Investigation on PV Panel with Phase Change Material

EasyChair Preprint no. 4710

Abstract

A part of solar radiation incident on Photo Voltaic (PV) panel is 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. PV panel with Phase Changing Material (PCM) provides maximum power by reducing the operating temperature of the panel. The efficiency of PV panel can be further improved by increasing thermal conductivity of PCM by using thermal conductivity enhancer. In the present work Aluminium is used as the thermal conductivity enhancer and paraffin wax as PCM and the numerical analysis gives the optimum height of the thermal conductivity enhancer. Results of the CFD analysis is implemented in the fabrication of PV-PCM experimental set up. The PV module without PCM had a temperature of 59 °C and with PCM have a temperature of 54°C, so the PV Panel temperature reduction is 5°C at the peak time, which reduces the negative effect on efficiency. PV module cooled with PCM showed better efficiency than without PCM and it increases  the efficiency from 9.71% to 10.38% at the peak time of solar intensity. The experimental results have been compared with numerical results in hand and is found to be matching well and is  also compared with the experimental results in the literature for the same range(850W/m²⁾of irradiation but for a different PCM material and are found to be matching qualitatively well with a higher efficiency for the present work.

Keyphrases: Phase Changing Material, PV panel, Thermal Conductivity Enhancers

@Booklet{EasyChair:4710,
  author = {V Gokul Vijay and S Jesseela},
  title = {Numerical and Experimental Investigation on PV Panel with Phase Change Material},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint no. 4710},

  year = {EasyChair, 2020}}