Author : Amit Sahay, V.K. Sethi and A.C. Tiwari

Photovoltaic(PV) cells also called Solar cells are electronic devices that convert sunlight directly into electricity. There are two prominent PV cell technologies viz. wafer-based crystalline silicon Solar cells and Thin Film Solar cells in the market today. The efficiency of wafer-based crystalline as well as Thin film Solar cells get reduced with increase of panel temperature. It is noted that the efficiency drops by about 0.4% for increase of 1° C of panel temperature. It is necessary to operate them at low temperatures to keep the PV module electrical efficiency at acceptable level. Therefore need for a low-cost cooling system for the Solar panels is felt. Air-cooling either by forced or natural flow, presents a non-expensive and simple method of PV cell cooling. This paper proposes schematic design, analytical design and optimisation of a Central Panel Cooling System (CPCS). Centralized design is useful in two respects viz. (i) it leads to low capital cost per watt output and (ii) it maximises the increase in output to the energy spent in the cooling system.This plant is being installed at Energy Park of Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya(RGPV), Bhopal, India.

Keywords : Efficiency of Solar panels, Panel Cooling System, Forced convection, Air conditioning systems, Ground-Coupled Heat Exchanger, Central Panel Cooling System(CPCS), Ground-Coupled Central Panel Cooling System (GC-CPCS)

Article published in International Journal of Current  Engineering  and Technology, Vol.3,No.4(Oct- 2013)