A comparative study on thermal performance of a 3-D model based solar photovoltaic panel through finite element analysis
Suman Kumar Laha, Pradip Kumar Sadhu, Ankur Ganguly, Ashok Kumar Naskar
Abstract
The operating temperature of a solar panel is the most important characteristic to be handled. Severe self-heating crumbles the efficiency and also shortens the life span of the panel. Therefore a proper thermal model is essential to improve the efficiency and to predict the life span of the module. In this manuscript, based on finite element analysis method (FEM) a degradation pattern of thermal management has been furnished. The numerical model has been formulated here through ANSYS-software by varying the mesh size from 0.5 m to 0.05 m gradually. Simulation result shows that without any cooling arrangement, the maximum temperature has been reached up to 66.974 °C with an efficiency of 12.168% and by applying the cooling system, the value of efficiency increases to 13.05% where the temperature decreases to 53.98 °C for 0.5 m mesh size. The potential of thermal management will be valuable where high ambient temperature and high solar intensity is dominating.