Performance comparison of mirror reflected solar panel with tracking and cooling

Dwindling nature of fossil fuels led many countries to search for new and alternative sources of energy. Solar energy is a clean, eco-friendly and abundantly available energy source. The useful forms of solar energy are either heat or electricity. The electricity demand is increasing every day. The conversion of solar energy to electricity through PV module is becoming popular but overprice of cells and lower efficiency hinder its use in developing countries. To reduce high cost per unit electricity, one way is to improve the performance of PV systems. New cost effective mirror reflecting linear focusing solar concentrator may be a good solution. As mirror boosted radiation intensity over the panel is more, the consequence is increased temperature of the panel. But panel temperature above 25°C reduces the open circuit voltage and decrease efficiency. Thus, proper cooling is needed to improve the panel performance. This paper presents the comparison of performance of a mirror reflected solar panel (MRSP) with automatic cooling and tracking. As the mirrors are fixed to the panel the incident radiation will be obstructed by the booster. Thus, a tracking mechanism is developed to focus the sun light approximately in perpendicular direction. The MRSP with automatic tracking and cooling was designed and constructed from locally available materials. The values of current and voltage were measured under different conditions of tracking. The output power was calculated and the values were compared for various combinations. From the results it could be depicted that tracking with only reflection and only cooling give higher power than tracking without reflection or cooling; but while tracking with reflection plus cooling the power increase is much more than any other combination. The average increment of power by using tracking with reflection plus cooling is about 59.71%.