Effect of Temperature on Performance of Solar Panels- Analysis

Renewable energy is gaining much global attention due to the recent energy demand scenario. Solar energy being the major contributor for this has lots of investigations going on to improve the efficiency of the solar panels. This paper majorly focuses on improving the solar panel efficiency by maintaining the operating temperature within a favourable limit. An experimental set up in which the temperature of the solar panel is monitored by a layer of water flow at regular intervals has been established. Further, this setup is automated through the sensors and controllers for better performance. The MATLAB simulation using power system renewable energy tool box is also being carried out and both the results match to the close approximation. It is also found that there is a considerable increase in the temperature of the water which makes the way for application of the system. The improvement in power of the experimental setup is found to be 14 % and the efficiency of the simulated system is found to be 19 %.