Energy and exergy analysis for photovoltaic modules cooled by evaporative cooling techniques

A large part of incident solar radiation on photovoltaic (PV) modules is converted into heat, leading to overheating and reduction of PV modules performance. The present work investigates the impact of rectangular aluminium fins (RAFs) and evaporative cooling represented by cotton wicks immersed water (CWWs) on the performance and thermal behaviour of the PV module. Results indicate that the evaporative cooling attained better cooling potential than RAFs, in which the PV module temperature was reduced by 22.3%, and the output power was enhanced by 73% thanks to continuous cooling of the PV module. A slight improvement in the PV module performance was observed with RAFs due to the increased heat transfer area, which reduced temperature by up to 6.7% and increased the output power of the PV module by up to 21.3 %. Exergy analysis shows a gradual increment of the electrical exergy and exergy efficiency using CWWs, which reduces the entropy generation of it more than RAFs. The study concluded that PV modules without cooling in hot climate areas may deteriorate their performance significantly.