Cost and time effective performance evaluation methods for photovoltaic module cooling techniques: Analytical and experimental study

For assessing the performance of a photovoltaic module (PV) cooler, the temperature-dependent PV efficiency difference factor, FTDED, was introduced earlier. The assessment was accomplished by differentiating whether the PV cooler performance was contributing to the gain or loss to the PV efficiency. That method is costly because it requires the availability of a fixed amount of solar irradiance of 1000 W/m2 that satisfy the PV standard test conditions, and also the use of one unit of a PV without a cooler that has the same solar cell number as a PV with a cooler. This paper proposes new methods that have the flexibility to be applied under various solar irradiance values. The new methods depend on a PV that has a single solar cell only, without a cooler, when executing the performance assessment for a PV with a cooler that has a known number of solar cells. As a result, the assessment cost can be significantly reduced. An experimental work is conducted for three PV cooler types and found that the performance assessment cost can be reduced by up to 33.33 %, by using the new methods, as compared to using the existing method. Hence, the new methods are cost effective. It is also shown that the experimental measurements are the same as the results obtained from the new methods. When the new method (FTDPD) is compared with the temperature-dependent photovoltaic power difference (ΔP) that is defined and derived, it is shown that the computational work can be reduced, because it has less influential parameters, thus, it is also a time-efficient method. PV cooler designers and manufacturers could be the possible users of the new methods.