An experimental investigation on coalescing the potentiality of PCM, fins and water to achieve sturdy cooling effect on PV panels

Improving the efficiency of silicon photovoltaic (PV) panels is of utmost importance to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 7. The energy loss aided by the heat generation of PV panel is the leading cause of the degradation of PV panels' efficiency as well as its longevity. A novel cooling system with PCM, fins and still water is propounded in this research as a solution. The proposed configuration utilizes the latent heat of fusion of PCM and the latent heat of evaporation of water to achieve effective cooling in a passive approach. HS 29 PCM is chosen in context with the location and system thermal characteristics. The results highlight that the per day output of the proposed configuration is 8.12% and 9.39% higher than the PV panel without cooling for the observed two selected days respectively. The maximum power enhancement was 20.25% and on average 8.57% improvement is obtained relative to reference PV. The thermal characteristics revealed that the temperature of the cooled panel was below 50 °C while the PV panel without cooling reached about 73 °C. The average and maximum temperature drops are observed to be 10.14 °C and 16.7 °C respectively. The maximum enhancement in power conversion efficiency was 20.13% when compared to the uncooled PV panel. Furthermore, corrosion analysis and thermal stress assessment are performed to ensure the longevity of the system. The energy saving is scaled to a 1 MW large-scale PV system and the results show ∼367 MWh of annual energy savings and ∼ 2 ktoe of reduction in CO2 emissions. The inclusion of a cooling strategy significantly improves the performance of the PV panel and contributes further in attaining SDG 7. [Display omitted] •A novel passive PV cooling approach with the aid of PCM, fins and water are accomplished.•Per day power output is enhanced by 9.39% and maximum power improvement is 20.25%.•Maximum enhancement in efficiency is 20.13%.•Energy saving potential is estimated to be 366.5 MW per year for large scale PV.•The cooled PV panel shows a 9.4% additional CO2 reduction compared to normal solar PV.