Performance investigation of transparent photovoltaic‐thermal collector with horizontal oscillating and rectangular spiral flow patterns
Dudul Das, Akash Dilip Kamble, Pankaj Kalita
Abstract
Efficiency drop due to increase in photovoltaic (PV) module operating temperature creates a huge difference between the projected and actual electricity generated in large power plants. As a solution to this problem Photovoltaic-Thermal (PV/T) collector, with PV at top and thermal collector at the bottom has been developed. PV/T can cool the PV as well as generate low-temperature thermal energy. This article presents a comparative experimental study of two newly developed PV/T collector having transparent solar panel with copper tube absorber arranged in rectangular spiral (PV/T-RS) and horizontal oscillating (PV/T-HO) configurations. The PV/T collectors are experimentally evaluated under outdoor conditions at Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. The developed PV/T's are compared in terms of electrical and thermal efficiencies. The PV/T-RS is found to be better as compared to PV/T-HO in terms of electrical output, whereas reverse result is reported in case of thermal output. The average electrical and thermal efficiency was found to be 11.2% ± 0.95% and 57.11% ± 2.94% for PV/T-RS. The calculated average thermal efficiency of PV/T-HO (63.6% ± 2.94%) is found to be 11.4% more as compared to PV/T-RS. The overall exergetic efficiency for PV/T-RS and PV/T-HO was found to be in the range 11.8%-16.2% ± 3.18% and 9.7%-15.25% ± 3.18%, respectively.