Activation Condition of a Fan that Cools a PV Panel by Blowing Ambient Air on Its Rear Face

Abstract

Under particular climatic conditions, the equilibrium temperature of a PV panel can increase excessively.This can significantly affect its electrical efficiency.The use of a cooling system, minimizing the negative effect of this temperature increase, can improves the efficiency of the cooled PV panel. In this work, we are interested in the cooling by a fan which blows ambient air on the rear face of a PV panel. This fan was activated by the PV panel itself. Thus, for an efficient use of this cooling system, it was necessary to define the activation conditions of this fan. To do this, a thermal model was used to determine the equilibrium temperature of the uncooled PV panel. Then, numerical simulations were performed by CFD code to evaluate the new equilibrium temperature of the cooled PV panel. This allowed to determine, by a one-diode electrical model, the improvement of electrical efficiency. The fan will then be activated from 5% improvement. This difference is then associated to the minimum temperature difference between the uncooled PV panel and the ambient air. For different values of solar radiation and air temperature, a correlation was established with this minimum difference.