A numerical study using three different approaches for enhancing the performance of PV panels with phase change materials -

Abstract

Enhancing the efficiency of renewable energy technologies has been the focus of numerous research projects in the last decades. One such area of interest has been improving the efficiency of photovoltaic (PV) panels. While PV panels use the most abundant and sustainable energy sources in the planet, they have quite a low efficiency in terms of energy conversion. Partly this low efficiency is due to the increase in surface temperature that occurs during the operation of PV panels. A small number of proven techniques have been developed to decrease the surface temperature. These techniques fall into two groups denoted by active cooling techniques and passive cooling techniques, respectively. Active cooling methods include forced ventilation or hydraulic cooling that requires maintenance and additional costs. On the other hand, the passive cooling methods include natural ventilation, and phase change (PCM) materials. This latter technique has shown promises in harnessing the nocturnal cooling effect with its inherent latent energy storage capacity. The aim of this project is to develop and compare several rigorous numerical approaches for the application of PCM to the passive cooling of PV panels. To this end, models of PV and PV-PCM modules subjected to indoor and outdoor conditions were developed using an in-house code developed within the “MATLAB” environment, the commercial “FLUENT” Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package, and the open source “OpenFOAM” CFD framework. The validation of these models was done by comparison with experimental data obtained from the literature. While the 3-D models simulated in “FLUENT” and “OpenFOAM” exhibited a close match to the experimental data, the 1-D models run in “MATLAB” showed relatively greater discrepancy. A parametric study is also conducted on the validated 3-D models to investigate the effect of varying the radiation load and the PCM type on the performance of the PV and PV-PCM modules.