Optimized Performance and Life Cycle Analysis of Cooled Solar PV

Abstract

This research is aiming to investigate practical effects of solar PV surface temperature on output performance, in particular output efficiency. Experimental works were carried out under different radiation condition for exploring variation of output voltage, current, output power and efficiency. After that, cooling test was conducted to find how much efficiency improvement can be achieved with cooling condition. As test results shows the efficiency of solar PV can be increased close to 50% with cooled condition, a cooling system is proposed for possible system setup of residential solar PV application. Life cycle assessment suggests that the cost payback time can be reduced to 12.5 years, compared to 15 years of the baseline of a similar system without cooling sub-system.