Performance Analysis of Solar Photovoltaic Thermal Hybrid Systems

The present commercial photovoltaic solar cell (PV) converts solar energy into electricity with a relatively low efficiency less than 15%. More than 80% of the absorbed solar energy is dumped into the surroundings as heat after photovoltaic conversion. The electrical efficiency of photovoltaic system drops as its operating temperature rises and for this reason PV cooling is necessary. Therefore, stabilizing the temperature of photovoltaic modules at low level is highly desirable to improve the efficiency. Hybrid solar technology has the advantage of increasing the energy output per unit installed collector area. India as a tropical country is deemed to have a good potential of applying this technology. In this book, solar PVT (Photovoltaic-Thermal) hybrid collector were designed by using a poly crystalline silicon PV module as solar absorber and the performance evaluation was carried out. The energy and exergy performance of the PVT systems has been experimentally determined for various mass flow rates of fluids. The experimental result shows that the combined PVT system has got better performance than the simple PV and solar PVT water hybrid system has better efficiency than both.