Evaluation of increased electricity production when cooling solar panels

Abstract

Abstract A municipal housing company located in the south of Sweden has energy renovated several buildings with a total of 380 apartments to meet today’s energy standards. Several energy efficient technologies and solutions were implemented and the energy consumption for these buildings were lowered by 50%. One of the buildings functions as a demonstration building for innovative solutions such as low temperature district heating, waste water heat recovery, and solar photovoltaic and thermal (PVT) panels. The solar PVT panels are cooled down with the main purpose to increase the electricity production. The cooling medium for these panels is circulated through two bedrock boreholes to dissipate the collected heat. The heat from the boreholes is then used for an electric heat pump to produce heat to send to the local district heating company. The electricity produced is primarily used in the building. The objective of this paper is to assess the electricity production from real-life outdoor Photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) plant. The plant was installed on the roof top of an energy renovated multi-family apartment building located in the south of Sweden. The cooling of the panels were turned on and off to assess if the electricity production would increase or not. The electricity production did not increase when the cooling was applied. The temperature measuring equipment which was installed at the wrong position and was supposed to measure the temperature at the back of the PVT is needed to compare the efficiency of the PVT plant and draw further conclusions.