Thermal and Electrical Performance of a PV Module Integrated With Microencapsulated Phase Change Material

Abstract

The efficiency in photovoltaic modules decreases as the cell temperature increases. It is necessary to have adequate thermal management mechanism for a photovoltaic module, especially when combined with building facade. This study aims to investigate the thermal and electrical performance of a photovoltaic module integrated with a microencapsulated phase change material layer under temporal variations of daily solar irradiation and exterior ambient temperature, via computational fluid dynamics simulations. The results show that the melting temperature and aspect ratio of the microencapsulated phase change material layer have significant effects on the thermal and electrical performances of photovoltaic modules.