Performance improvement of PV panel and its analysis with various types of oil coating

Abstract

Photovoltaic industry is one of the promising industry for providing an alternate source of energy. There are different environmental conditions affecting the efficiency of the PV panel like change in irradiance, temperature, dust, shading, mounting, humidity, wind, inclination and various other factors. Among these other factors oil and snow are the factors which can also affect the output of the PV panel. Hence the objective of this paper is to improve the performance of the PV panel by using a fine layer of coating of oil. Here we have used four different types of oils like labovac oil, mobil oil, sunflower oil and olive oil for testing the effect of these oil coating on the performance of the PV panel. The result was compared with the panel with no coating. Both laboratory and outdoor experiment was conducted to study the effect of oil coating on the maximum power of the PV panel. Even in the laboratory experiment the effect on open circuit voltage and short circuit current was also tested. By using fine layer of coating with labovac oil the performance and efficiency of the panel increases in comparison to all other. Even open circuit voltage and short circuit current increases with increase in irradiance.