Thermal and electrical performance evaluation of single and double pass photovoltaic-thermal solar collector with cross-flow baffles and varying transparency: A computational analysis

The present work deals with the development of a semi-transparent photovoltaic thermal (PV-T) solar collector (STPVT) through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling using COMSOL Multiphysics. The study was carried out in three stages; firstly, the CFD model was developed for STPVT and validated with experimental data. Secondly, three different configurations of semi-transparent PV-T collector were investigated, i.e., single pass with PV module on top (SPC), double pass with PV module on top followed by glass cover and absorber plate (DPT), and double pass with PV module in between the glass cover and absorber plate (DPS). The absorber plate was incorporated with cross-flow baffles for improved thermal performance due to increased surface area and turbulence. The study found a thermal efficiency of 76.94 % for DPS configuration and a total heat utilisation of 289.63 W at 50 % transparency level, i.e., 2–4 times higher than other configurations. Furthermore, the DPS model was investigated for thermal and electrical performance with different PV module transparency levels (52,42,27,13 %). The DPS with 18 solar cells having 13 % transparency exhibited peak power density (8 %) at 717 W/m2 and 101.89 °C panel temperature, achieving superior thermal efficiency (84 %) and total heat utilisation (315.09 W), surpassing configurations with higher transparency.