Integrated Passive and Hybrid Thermal Cooling for Photovoltaic Systems: A Multi-Resource Framework for Enhanced Efficiency and Co-Located Infrastructure

This paper proposes an integrated, site-adaptive thermal management framework for photovoltaic solar installations, addressing the well-documented 15–25% efficiency loss caused by field operating temperatures. Rather than optimizing a single cooling modality, the framework layers ground-source air exchange, thermosiphon convection, surface water thermal buffering, and wind-driven forced convection into a unified architecture matched to local resource availability. A key observation is that PV cooling infrastructure and ground-source HVAC infrastructure are largely coextensive, enabling capital costs to be amortized across multiple simultaneous value streams: generation efficiency gains, extended panel lifespan, and building climate control offset. The Northern Plains region of the United States is examined as a convergence geography for this framework. An illustrative quantitative scenario and siting resource inventory