A simple procedure to study the performance of individual solar cells in a linear concentrating photovoltaic/thermal integrated system

摘要

Performance analysis of photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) integrated systems has drawn considerable interest among the researchers throughout the world. Recent publications on PV/T integrated systems, focussing mostly on the efficiency of a PV module, emphasise the need for studying the performance of individual solar cells within the module. In the present paper, the effects of temperature and water mass flow rate on both the system energy and exergy efficiencies are studied by illustrating the variation in individual solar cell temperature and its corresponding water temperature along the length of the module for multiple receiver configurations connected in series. For the system, it is found that, for a water temperature rise of 5℃ and 50℃ with water flowing at a rate of 0.0425kg/s at an inlet water temperature of 25℃, the solar cell electrical efficiency decreases by 0.4% and 3.7% respectively with respect to its rated efficiency of 16.8%, at 25℃.