THERMAL REGULATION OF A PHOTOVOLTAIC PANEL BY PIN FINS: A NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

Resumo

Due to the growing interest in solar radiation to generate electricity, the use of photovoltaic panels
(PV) has been increasingly explored in recent years. Most photovoltaic modules have low efficiency in
converting solar energy to electricity, even under ideal operating conditions. Due to this low efficiency, the
remaining energy is converted into heat, increasing panel temperature and decreasing efficiency. In addition, the
effect of operating at high temperatures reduces the module's lifespan. Therefore, it is crucial to apply a cooling
system to regulate its temperature; this system can be passive or active, which the latter is often unsuitable due to
the power required to operate the compressor or pump used in the cooling process. Thus, in the current work, an
experimental and numerical investigation is performed considering a passive cooling system consisting of 4
segmented L-shaped aluminum fins arranged in the central region on the rear surface of a PV panel. A serial
experiment was conducted on different days with clear sky conditions for December 2021. The fins decrease the
panel temperature (up to 4.7 °C) and the efficiency and the output power increase by 2.4% and 2.1%,
respectively, compared to the reference panel. Moreover, the ANSYS program was used to predict the PV
surface temperature; the numerical results were validated with the experimental results for a conventional PV
panel without a cooling system. By the numerical analysis considering the fins on the rear surface of the PV
panel, satisfactory results were obtained compared to the experimental values, with an average deviation of about
2.7%. The proposed cooling method improved the convective heat exchange and cooled the PV system for all
days considered in the current analysis; reducing the PV surface temperature can avoid electrical conversion
efficiency losses and increase the PV system lifespan.