Numerical and Experimental Study of a PVT Water System under Daily Weather Conditions

Abstract

Worldwide need for renewable energy sources increases significantly with the drastic negative greenhouse effects of climate change. This study considers a water-cooled hybrid thermo-electric panel (PV/T) which contributes to better harvesting of solar energy. A numerical CFD model was developed for power generation of a standard PV panel as well as for a water-based PV/T system laminated with polymer matrix composite (PMC) materials, and user-defined functions (UDFs) were developed and integrated with the CFD model to implement exact boundary conditions. Experimentation under daily weather conditions was carried out in order to validate the numerical CFD model by measuring the surface temperatures of PV and PV/T systems as well as the temperatures of the water inlet and outlet of the cooling system. The results show that the maximum and minimum deviations of the surface temperature between numerical and experimental studies matched well compared with the studies performed in the literature. Moreover, the numerical model had a rapid response to temperature changes of PV and PV/T modules under sudden weather changes (cloudy/sunny). It was shown that the electrical efficiency of the cooled PV/T module can achieve 20.8% in addition to a thermal efficiency of 53.5%. The current study is a validation of the performance of polymer composite laminated water-cooled PV/T systems under daily weather conditions.