Study of the Relationship Between Temperature and Efficiency in Photovoltaic Systems

Abstract

Photovoltaic solar energy has been growing due tothe demand for diversification of the global energy grid and theconcern about replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. Thereis a great potential for this form of energy generation due to highlevels of solar irradiation. However, the efficiency of commercialpanels is still low and is negatively affected by temperature riseson the panel. To mitigate this effect, several cooling techniqueshave been previously proposed. This work focuses on studyingthe relation between the temperature of solar panels and theenergy produced by them. It also uses thermoelectric cells actingas coolers for the system bringing down the panel temperature toincrease its efficiency. The main goal is to build a plantconsisting of a solar panel attached to one or more thermoelectriccells and connected to a data acquisition system. This setup willbe used to evaluate the improvement in performance obtainedthrough this strategy. The experiments will be carried out at thePetroleum Measurement Evaluation Laboratory - LAMP, and theresults will be compared with mathematical and simulationmodels present in the literature.