Design and Implementation of Automatic Water Spraying System for Solar Photovoltaic Module

Abstract

Photovoltaic (PV) cell has a characteristic of decrease in power beyond a certain temperature. This decrease in power is due to a drop in the open circuit cell voltage. This decreases the efficiency of the PV cell. The objective of this research is to increase the efficiency of PV cells by reducing the PV cell temperature and reflection loss. The cell temperature and reflection loss can be reduced by spraying water over the PV cells. On spraying water over the USP36, 24V PV module, the power is found to be increased. The test result shows a 1V to 2V increase in voltage, with an efficiency increment of 1% to 1.27%. The test results of USP37 show the voltage increase of 1.2 V to 2.1 V in the PV module voltage. Due to the increase in voltage, efficiency increment of 1.29% is observed. The efficiency of USP36 with water spraying is more than the efficiency of USP37 without water spraying. In the PV power systems, an average increase in efficiency of 0.5% is observed.