Comparative Assessment of Three Cooling Designs on the Energy and Exergy Performance of a Concentrated Photovoltaic Panel

Overheating of the photovoltaic (PV) solar cell causes performance degradation. To prevent this situation, various cooling methods are applied to PVs. In this study, cooling channel and TEG (thermoelectric generator) were utilized in CPV (concentrated photovoltaic) cooling. Three different configurations were designed and the effects of increasing solar concentration ratio (C=1 to 6) on the energy and exergy performances were investigated. The CPV-channel, CPV-channel-TEG and CPV-TEG-channel design were named as Case 1, Case 2 and Case 3, respectively. Aluminum oxide-water was applied in the channel system at a volume fraction of 0.03 at Re=1000 and an inlet temperature of 20°C. Under the influence of these parameters, energy and exergy analyses of Case 1, Case 2 and Case 3 were carried out. The change of C from minimum to maximum resulted in the highest total output power value for Case 3. In Case 3 for C=6, with 21.24% and 19.24% higher total output power compared to Case 1 and Case 2, respectively. From C=1 to 6 caused a decrease of 15.34% and 12.95% in the electrical exergy efficiency of Case 1 and Case 2, respectively, while it provided a 2% improvement in Case 3. The increase in C had different effects for Case 1, Case 2, and Case 3. Both PV and TEG were utilized most effectively in Case 3.