Airflow and phase change material assisted cooling of photovoltaic panels

Phase change material (PCM) based heat sinks offer an innovative and effective solution to prevent temperature induced losses in photovoltaic (PV) panel efficiencies by providing passive temperature control (thermal regulation). In this thesis, an experimental study was conducted on novel PCM and air assisted heat sink desings, aimed at improving PCM assisted thermal regulation processes in PV panels. The developed heat sinks introduce a novel approach by combining simultaneous passive airflow and PCM assistance, addressing certain limitations reported in the literature regarding conventional PV-PCM systems. In the study, five system configurations are considered including, a reference PV, a conventional PV-PCM and three PV-PCM with air. Experiments were conducted in a laboratory setting under constant irradiation and ambient temperatures of 1000 W/m² - 25°C and 750 W/m² - 17°C, at three different orientations of 30°, 45° and 90°. The results demonstrate that the PCM and air based heat sink design provides simultaneous significant improvements in thermal regulation duration, post-regulation temperature rise, electricity generation, and solidification time. The experiments revealed enhancements up to 46% in thermal regulation duration, 11°C reduction in maximum PV temperature, 36.5% decrease in solidification time, and 4.4% increase in total electricity generation.