Photovoltaic Module Efficiency Improvement via Integration of Water Fountain

It is known that the availability of conventional energy resources is decaying day-by-day. The increasing demand of electrical power forced the power generating sector to shift towards the renewable energy resources. The power production through solar PV systems have been accepted as one of the prominent conversion systems worldwide. The solar PV system provides more reliable and affordable electrical power at large scale. However, the efficiency of solar PV panels is too low up to 15% at commercial level. Therefore, the efficiency improvement of exiting solar panels has considered as one of the major research challenges. In the present study, an innovative design has been proposed to improve the operational efficiency of PV panels via integration of water-cooling based fountain system. The test results have been obtained by implementation of proposed water-cooling based fountain system on Ecosense (insight solar) test-bed. As a result, it has been observed that the efficiency of PV panels improves by approximately 34% and 28% by its previous efficiency with the integration of a cooling mechanism at no load and loaded condition respectively.