Study of Solar PV Panel Under Partial Vacuum Conditions: A Step Towards Performance Improvement
Ankur Kumar Gupta, Yogesh K. Chauhan, Tanmoy Maity, Ria Nanda
Abstract
In this novel experiment, the performance of solar PV cell is tested under different pressure (partial vacuum condition), which is a step towards its performance improvement. The small-scale hardware is designed and developed for this setup, which contains mainly the transparent air-tight container, pressure gauge, temperature sensor, irradiation sensor, and compressor unit. In this experiment, under different vacuum condition the performance of the solar PV panel is exhibited by I-V characteristic, temperature v/s vacuum curve, voltage v/s temperature curve; current, voltage and power waveforms using digital storage oscilloscope. From this experiment, it has been observed that the partial vacuum condition affects solar panel positively. One of the key findings is that as the vacuum level is increased, eventually power generated by the solar panel is increased. In the case of -2.3039 (inHg) of pressure, the temperature decreased from 48.172–37.149°C without humidity and dust particle. In this case, the power is increased from 2.713 W to 2.876 W which is a total 6% increment in power.