Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matpr

Photovoltaic cells cooling techniques for energy efficiency optimization

Sam Joseph Paul a, Uddeshya Kumar b, Siddharth Jain b,⇑
a
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, College of Engineering Roorkee, Roorkee, India
b
Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering Roorkee, Roorkee, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: As the temperature of the PV panel plays an important role in influencing the performance in terms of
Received 24 August 2020 electrical output, it becomes important to look after the techniques or ways to examineand maintain it
Received in revised form 4 September 2020 in within the limit of maximum performance parameters. Therefore, the present paper details with the
Accepted 7 September 2020
discussion of the existing technologies to maintain the PV panel temperature by different researchers.
Available online xxxx
Based on the review of existing technologies a new concept has also been proposed. The proposed work
is mainly focusing on the reusability and usage of the coolant in an optimised manner. The Industry
Keywords:
which will use the PV Cells for power can be self-sufficient as it will use a much efficient PV Panels
Photovoltaic
Cooling techniques
and coolant will be used as a by-product for any product.
Solar Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Energy efficiency Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Confer-
PV Panel ence on Innovations in Clean Energy Technologies.

1. Introduction appreciating the use of Photovoltaic Cells commonly known as

Solar Panels. Solar Farms are situated in locations where sufficient
As we move forward towards the future, population and energy quantity of solar energy can be captured [5–18].
consumption both are increasing proportionally and exponentially.
Today most of our energy requirements are fulfilled by Fossil Fuels.  Pros of Solar Energy (Based on Photovoltaics)
Evenmost of our current technology is based on Petrol, Diesel, Coal o Doesn’t cause pollution of any kind.
etc, which are all Fossil Fuels. The negative effects of this technol- o Light Weight and Easy to Transport.
ogy are that they are limited and very much are the cause of Global o Easy setup.
Warming which in itself brings up huge issues that can, may or are o If required relocation of the Photovoltaic Panels is also
doing some damage to the habitat that makes the sustainment of possible.
life on Earth possible. As our basic daily needs excluding travelling,  Cons of Solar Energy & Photovoltaics
very much requires electricity as an energy source, efforts were o Efficiency is less (Especially of Si-based Photovoltaics)
made to create clean sources that won’t cause any damage to the o (On Earth) Weather conditions change hence can hinder
environment. Options present were Hydro Electric Power, Nuclear energy production.
Power (Although Radiation was a problem), Tidal Power, Geo- o Solar Farms take a huge amount of land area to setup.
Thermal Energy, Photovoltaic Cells etc. Of all the clean energy
sources the idea of Photovoltaic cells showed us the best source Efficiency is a major problem for Photovoltaics. Efficiency
of energy, our star the Sun. The Sun produces 3.846
1026 Watts defines how much of the Solar Energy is our Photovoltaic Cell able
per second. Every hour 4.3
1020Joules fall on the surface of the to capture. Unfortunately, Photovoltaics (Si-based Panels) only are
Earth from the Sun. For comparison, total Human annual energy about 20% efficient [1]. Other compounds are in development that
consumption is about 4.1
1020 Joules. That is why we are moving may stretch it up, until then some basic tricks and techniques are
towards using Solar Energy [1–10]. The technology to capture and recommended to increase the efficiency of the Photovoltaic cells.
convert this energy directly into electric power is a device called As temperature increases Bang gap inside the semiconductor
the Photovoltaic cell. Now world governments are increasing and material becomes closer hence increasing some little non-
noticeable current but it also affects the Voltage by decreasing it
hence causing a 2.2 mV drop per °C [2–4].
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Jain).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.09.197
2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Innovations in Clean Energy Technologies.

Please cite this article as: S. Joseph Paul, U. Kumar and S. Jain, Photovoltaic cells cooling techniques for energy efficiency optimization, Materials Today:
Proceedings, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.09.197
S. Joseph Paul, U. Kumar and S. Jain Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig 1. Power Vs Voltage Chart [1].

1.1. Behaviour of solar panels under high temperatures air-cooling systems [5]. The experiment compared the power pro-
duction when different methods of air-cooling are applied and
Constantly working under the exposure of sun increases the when no cooling is applied to the Photovoltaic Panel. Observa-
surface temperature of the panel up to 65 °C and hence further tions were made for how temperatures affected the power pro-
drops down the efficiency of the panel as when the temperature duction with cooling system and without a cooling system, it
increases a minute increase of current is noticed but a major drop was observed that when the temperature was increased the
in voltage is also marked. The material used in this is Silicon (Si) overall efficiency was decreased in both cases but relative to
Semiconductor. Increase in temperature do help to reduce the each other air-cooled Photovoltaic panel was more efficient than
bandgap a little hence allowing a small amount of increased cur- the uncooled Photovoltaic panel. The air applied to the panels
rent, but due to reverse saturation current being directly propor- were also applied in two ways one was forced air flow using
tional to temperature also increases which in turn decreases the a fan or a blower and other was natural convection. Fan
cell voltage by about 2.2 mV for every °C increase[2–4]. As shown decreased the power output as it was powered by the Photo-
in the blue highlighted region of the graph, power produced in the voltaic panel.
lower temperature regions is the highest (Fig. 1).
2.1.1. Methods of air-cooling [4]
2. Various panel cooling technologies
(A) Using Thin Metal Sheet (TMS)
Many different kinds of cooling technologies and techniques are (B) Using Fin system
available these days but some are basic and very practical to be (A) Thin Metal Sheet or TMS method used a thin aluminium
used and have been well observed and documented. sheet inserted in the centre of the cooling channel as shown
in Fig. 2. Air has flowed into the channel and the heat from
2.1. Air cooling the panel is first transferred to the thin metal sheet and then
to the air [4].
Air cooling simply uses air to exchange heat from the surface of (B) In Fin System method metal fins are attached in the airflow
the Photovoltaic Cell to the surrounding atmosphere. Researchers channel as shown in Fig. 3. This method gave the best results
have conducted experiments with different methods of in the experiment [4].

Fig 2. Air Cooling Methods [4].

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S. Joseph Paul, U. Kumar and S. Jain Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

 Fin system applied with the heat sink is generally used for minor experiment resulted in the lowering of the temperature
setups of Photovoltaic cell [4]. the panel was working in temperature was reduced by
5–23 °C.
2.2. Water cooling (water spray technique) (B) Double Side Cooling: Double Side Cooling provided the best
performance overall Maximal power output was 40.7 W and
In water cooling system panels are cooled using water sprin- efficiency was increased by 7.7%.
klers that spray water on to the surface of the panel using 10 or (C) No cooling: No Cooling affected with least of the values only
more nozzles (as shown in Fig. 4). Three configurations of the about 35 W of maximal power output and efficiency of
water sprinklers were tested: about 13.9%.

(A) Single Side Cooling: In Single Side Cooling either the front Problem with this model was that the heated water runs off the
side or rear side was applied to the cooling apparatus as in panel surface or evaporates and is wasted.
the research done by Grubisic-Cabo et al. [11]. For front side Solution: Water drain can also be used to recycle the water and
only, Power production was 40.1 W as indicated in Table 1 use the heated water for domestic purpose or any other Industrial
[4], and for the rear side, 39.9 W was observed. Irwan et al. Purpose. Further to deal with this problem Hybrid System was
[2] also conducted an indoor experiment where they used introduced.
a 500 W lamp as a solar simulator. Two 50 W Photovoltaic
Panels were used. A DC pump sprayed water over the surface
2.3. Hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T)
of the panels and it was powered by one of the panels. The
This is the most popular and most in use technique with Photo-
voltaic cell. This Hybrid system uses a cooling system applied to a
Photovoltaic panel setup looks like in Fig. 5. The coolant when
heated leaves the Panel through and can be used for useful pur-
poses or can be recycled. Coolants generally used are Water and

Fig 3. Air Cooling System.

Fig 5. Hybrid PV/T.

Table 2
Cooling rate along a day [9].

Time Cooling Rate (°C/min)

11:30–11:35 2.26
11:50–11:55 1.8
12:10–12:15 1.8
12:30–12:35 1.62
12:50–12:55 2.06
13:10–13:15 1.86
Average 1.9

Fig 4. Water Cooling.

Table 1
PV panel mean performance parameters [4].

Cooling Power Avg. Panel Efficiency Increase In Power

Surface (W) Temperature (°C) (%) Output (%)
No cooling 35 56 13.92 –
Rear 39.9 33.7 15.59 5.4
Front 40.1 29.6 15.42 6.0
Both 40.7 24.1 15.92 7.7
Fig 6. Thermoelectric Cooling using Semiconductor Peltier.

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S. Joseph Paul, U. Kumar and S. Jain Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig 7. Micro-Channel Cooling.

air. Water can be useful as it can be used for further general and by the flow of heat (Fig. 6). The heat flow is generally from High
domestic purposes. Water Cooled Photovoltaic Panel had an temperature to low temperature. The output potential is generally
increase in efficiency by 50%. directly proportional to the Temperature Najafi and Woodbury
Moharram et al. [9] experimented with the Photovoltaic panels [17] in their model brings the temperature of the photovoltaic
in months June & July hottest months of a year (Table 2). June & panel down using compact Peltier modules. Peltier modules were
July are the best months to carry out Cooling system experiments powered from the PV cells. Experiment Concluded that this
as it would minimise every variable affecting the Cooling system as method was feasible for high powered PV cells. This method is a
well as the efficiency of the panel. As the system is open to the sur- forced cooling method. Peltier is provided with electricity to cool
rounding there will be some water loss with evaporation and down the PV panel and another heated side is fixed with a heat
observations concluded of 5% water loss as compared to of the sink.
Tank volume. The observation was taken every 15 min of constant
solar exposure to the Photovoltaic panel, and according to the 2.5. Micro-channel cooling
mathematical relation of efficiency of the Solar panel to the irradi-
ance and the power produced. In this method, small channels only about 1 mm are filled with
l ¼ Pmax=I  A; fluid in lateral positions attached behind the solar panel. The fluid
moves from an external heat exchanger and cools the panel surface
Pmax (in Watts) is the power generated by the panel and is circulated back to the heatexchanger to get cooled down
I (in W/m2) is the Solar irradiance incident on the panel (Fig. 7).
And A is the surface area of the panel in m2
2.6. Heat pipe cooling
This experiment, as well as all the above observations, are done
by Moharram et al. [9]. This experiment focused mainly on In heat pipe cooling heat is transferred to the outer atmosphere
reusability of water, less wastage of water and getting the maxi- using the change of fluid from a liquid to gas (Fig. 8). In a metal
mum amount of energy efficiency. container of a defined shape one side is contacted to the heated
Solar Panel liquid inside the container heats up and starts to turn
2.4. Thermo electric cooling system into vapour this vapour attaches to the top of the container and
loses its heat and condenses hence returning to the liquid form.
Peltier effect is the basic principle behind this technique. Gang et al. [18] in their experiments devised out a relation of elec-
According to Peltier effect when there is a temperature gradient trical efficiency with Number of heat pipes required. Water was
between two junctions of a thermocouple a potential is developed used inside the condensers. The experiment reached a power out-
put of 800 W/m2 with a panel surface area of about 1 m2, and 200 L
of water was used.
Points to be noted were;

 The size of the heat pipe was about the same as the Photovoltaic
panel.
 This method doesn’t increase efficiency drastically. The experi-
mental efficiency increased was only about 3%.
 Large scale usage is not recommendable.

3. Recommendations

This project Idea is an advanced version of the Hybrid PV/T sys-

tem. It uses the same concept of preservation of the coolant in use
and provides the heated coolant with opportunities to be used in
manufacturing a product. Simple electronic control circuits and
sensors are used to control the input and output of the coolant
from the Photovoltaic Panel. Apparatus is apparently same with
changes in the container part. Coolant will enter the Photovoltaic
panel then at a specific temperature will leave the panel. The
heated coolant that left the panel is transported to a nearby indus-
try or a plant where it can be used to form products. This project
Fig 8. Heat Pipe Cooling System. deals with the ideas and methods to form a self-sufficient Industry
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S. Joseph Paul, U. Kumar and S. Jain Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig 9. Proposed model.

which will be solely powered by Solar Energy and the heat the coolant, and temperatures of the solar panel and the coolant. The
coolant acquires will be used to produce products for the Industry. computer system would make sure to regulate the coolant inside
The Model offers wide use of coolant and as no electricity will be the system according to the specified temperatures. Coolant will
used from the grid, saves the cost of energy. Coolant can be of enter the solar panel structure, then absorb the heat, a computer
choice, as long as it is required for manufacturing a useful product. measures the temperature of solar panel and the heated coolant,
Mainly this idea refers to water. Water is flexible and can be trans- at certain specified temperatures valves will open for the coolant
ferred easily. This heated water can be used for Industries where it to pass and get to the industry where it is needed. If more temper-
is required such as Juice Manufacturing or Syrup Production and ature is required coolant will be heated up.
many more.
The main body of the Physical model 4. Conclusion
This project comprises of 4 subparts as shown in Fig. 9.
This project idea is designed with the help of all the above
 The Industry or Factory methods mentioned. The idea mainly focuses on the reusability
 Solar Farm and usage of the coolant in an optimised manner. Coolant may flow
 Coolant Containers in confinements like in Microchannel Cooling system or Air Chan-
 Coolant Transfer Pipes nel cooling system. Fluid recycling is inspired by the Hybrid PV/T
model. The Industry which will use the PV Cells for power can be
3.1. The industry or factory self-sufficient as it will use a much efficient PV Panels and coolant
will be used as a by-product for any product.
Industry or Factory which will use the Solar Energy will be
setup close to the solar farm. Coolant will flow into the Solar panels
CRediT authorship contribution statement
and computerised systems will be used to measure the tempera-
ture of coolant and solar panel, hence maintaining a constant tem-
Sam Joseph Paul: Writing - original draft, Conceptualization,
perature for the Solar Panel.
Resources. Uddeshya Kumar: Writing - review & editing,
Resources. Siddharth Jain: Supervision, Methodology, Conceptual-
3.2. Solar farm ization, Resources.

As stated above Solar Panel will be close to the Industry, and the
Declaration of Competing Interest
Coolant Containers. Fig. 8 demonstrates a basic view and model for
the whole system.
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
3.3. Coolant containers to influence the work reported in this paper.

Coolant containers would be situated very close to the solar

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