A Comparative Study of Different Self-Cooling Mechanisms for Photovoltaic Systems

Due to irradiation, solar panels generate heat that accounts into power loss, thus, decreasing its efficiency. Different methods of cooling have been studied and implemented to compensate the heat being generated. In this paper, the effect of self-cooling of two different photovoltaic systems is compared to a standalone solar photovoltaic system. One of these systems has an on-and-off actuator of the power harvested from the solar panel to the battery and the TECs. The other one uses the principle of PID system in driving the power harvested from the solar panel towards the TECs and the battery. Results showed that self-cooling mechanism improved the generated power by the solar panel. The on-off-controlled cooling mechanism was able to generate the PV panel with an average of 26.221 W which is 13.69% higher than of the panel without cooling mechanism which generated an average of 23.064 W and 11.55% higher than that of the panel with PID-controlled cooling mechanism having an average generated power of 23.506. Though the PV panel with PID-controlled cooling mechanism was able to generate power 1.92% higher than that with no cooling mechanism, t-Test showed that it is not significant enough.