A Novel Approach to Thermal Design of Solar Modules: Selective-Spectral and Radiative Cooling
For commercial solar modules, up to 80% of the incoming sunlight may be dissipated as heat, potentially raising the temperature 20-30 degrees C higher than the ambient. In the long run, extreme self-heating may erode efficiency and shorten lifetime, thereby, dramatically reducing the total energy output by almost ~10% Therefore, it is critically important to develop effective and practical cooling methods to combat PV self-heating. In this paper, we explore two fundamental sources of PV self-heating, namely, sub-bandgap absorption and imperfect thermal radiation. The analysis suggests that we redesign the optical and thermal properties of the solar module to eliminate the parasitic absorption (selective-spectral cooling) and enhance the thermal emission to the cold cosmos (radiative cooling). The proposed technique should cool the module by ~10 degrees C, to be reflected in significant long-term energy gain (~ 3% to 8% over 25 years) for PV systems under different climatic conditions.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- Solar Energy Research Institute for India and the United States (SERIIUS)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC36-08GO28308
- OSTI ID:
- 1344217
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/CP-5J00-67986
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Presented at the 2016 IEEE 43rd Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 5-10 June 2016, Portland, Oregon
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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