Performance Analysis of Photovoltaic/Thermal Hybrid System Integrated With Phase Change Heat Storage Materials

Incorporating phase change material (PCM) with photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) modules can improve the power generation efficiency of photovoltaic panels by increasing the cooling capacity, and the stored heat can also be used rationally. Based on the design of two PV/T modules integrated with phase change heat storage materials, the performances were analyzed numerically and compared with the traditional PV/T panel. The overall performance of integrated system was analyzed from the energy and exergy aspect. The influence of cooling fluid flow was also examined. The results show that the integration of PCM with PV/T module can significantly improve the overall performance of the system. The PV/T system with two phase change heat storage materials have the highest daily total energy efficiency and overall exergic efficiency, reaching 67.65% and 12.86%, respectively. Moreover, the maximum energy per day could reach 3603.2 W·h/m2. With the increase of the volume rate of cooling fluid, the overall energy efficiency increases slightly, but the overall exergic efficiency decreases significantly.