Power Output Improvement of Solar Panel by Automatically Controlled Air Cooling System: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Energy plays a prominent role in human society. As a result of technological and industrial development, the demand for energy is rapidly increasing. Existing power sources that are mainly fossil fuel based are leaving an unacceptable legacy of waste and pollution apart from diminishing stock of fuels. Hence, the focus is now shifted to large-scale propagation of renewable energy. Solar energy is becoming a fast-developing field. The utilization of solar energy can be done using either photovoltaic's (PV) or solar thermal methods. During the energy conversion in the solar panel, around 15% of energy is lost due to thermal effects. This creates a major thermal design challenge as every degree of temperature rise in the PV panels reduces the power produced by 0.5%. With the objective of reducing the power loss due to thermal effects, the design and development of closed-loop control system with air cooling arrangement have been made to avoid temperature rise, and the performance of solar panel has been evaluated for different intensities. It has been found that there is 5.38% increase in the output power.