Effective thermal management of photovoltaic modules equipped with innovative concentrating techniques

Due to growing apprehension about energy density in Photovoltaics (PV), researchers have proposed multiple concentrators and thermal-management techniques. In the present study, based on system operation and power output, two designs are proposed: compound parabolic collector (CPC) based PV (PV-CPC) and Fresnel lens-based PV (PV-FNL). A gravity-assisted evaporative cooling system in PV-CPC resulted in 7.1 ℃ to 11.2 ℃ temperature drop, which led to 13.1% to 26.1% improvement in power output. A higher fill factor (0.72 compared to 0.65 for reference model) also complements the system design, which had minimum tracking. Further, owing to both electrical and thermal outputs, the PV-FNL model is suggested, which had an effective forced cooling. Significant improvement in module power output (46% to 59%) followed by useful heat gain (500 W with water exit temperature as ≈ 95 ℃) upholds the efficacy of the proposed system. However, the low fill factor (0.49) indicates an additional cooling requirement. Though the results are promising, enviroeconomic and life cycle analysis of PV-CPC and PV-FNL is worth gauging for in-field applications. Even, in PV-FNL configuration, the multi-junction cell-based module and CPC integrated thermal receiver can fetch better and more reliable results.