Photovoltaic system deployment optimization
Date
2014
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
The approach proposed in this paper relates to the concept of solar cell cooling. By tilting the solar cell at an angle to the sun, the heating of the solar cell decreases due to reduced solar irradiance, while the cooling of the solar cell by thermal radiation and convection remains the same, and thus the solar cell will be cooler and more efficient. Of course, with such a tilted deployment, more solar cells have to be used for the same deployment area. Thus, this thesis concerns itself with how to gain the maximum energy from certain amount of deployment area by optimizing the geometry of the PV installation. Changing the incident light angle could possibly increase the electricity created by a certain area of incident light but will increase the number of solar cells required. Crystalline silicon solar cell price has fallen dramatically in the past decades and at the same time, the one-time installation fee of a PV system remains very high. Therefore, as the solar panel price becomes minimal compared to the installation cost, and as most households have limited space for solar installation, it is worth looking into the solar cells deployment that result in the largest electricity generation from a fixed size area used for solar cells placement during one installation. The behavior of solar cells at different tilt angles between the incident light has been theoretically and experimentally studied. Experimental results and simulations suggested a power output gain of at most 3% can be achieved by deploying the solar cell at a certain angle away from sun light for the modules tested under normal weather condition. In summary, this project has explored an alternative passive cooling method that could possibly increase the PV power output from a fixed area of solar panels placed on a limited space, but is proved to be not very practical.