PV panel Water Cooling Using Different Jet Nozzle Diameter

Abstract

Power conversion in PV cells is limited to 15-20% from the incident radiation. That conversion Suffers a severe drop with the rise of the PV cell temperature by 0.45~0.5% for each degree centigrade rise. The primary objective of this study is to reduce the cell temperature using front face cooling. A CFD model has been designed using COMSPL Multiphysics 5.3 to investigate the effect of water input temperature and the change of the water flow rate. A physical model was also utilized using two 330 PV panels for comparing the results at the same environmental conditions. The study shows that the PV cell efficiency could be increased by 22.8% using a 2 mm nozzle diameter and 4 L.P.M water flow rates.