Performance Evaluation of Hybridphotovoltaic Thermal Collectors

A vast evolution on renewable energy resources are going on, particularly on solar energy. It is one of the better option for alleviate the poverty in developing countries, where majority of people do not have access to modern forms of energy. Due to their inherent decentralized nature of renewable energy resources, they can large contribute to resolve the many energy problems. Amid of various techniques and technologies for the exploitation of solar energy, the Photovoltaic conversion is the one which can directly produce electricity, while the thermal collectors provide heating energies. These two systems are independent and different, and are not compatible. Individually PV panels can generate electricity by converting the incident solar radiation. However, when the incident solar radiation is more, temperature of the panel also rises which lowers the performance of the PV panel. By hybridizing the thermal collectors with PV panel one can reduce the temperature of the panel and that heat can transferred to thermal collectors. Thereby one can enhance the panel performance and store the energy in thermal collector for later usage. This hybrid solar photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) offers an interesting option now because the absorbed solar radiation is converted into electric energy and heat simultaneously. The objective of the work is to study theoretically and experimentally the hybrid (PV/T) Collector. To conduct the theoretical analysis a mathematical model is used to study the enhanced panel performance and collector as well. Direct absorption type collector is arranged beneath the panel to extract heat from the photovoltaic module. By hybridizing, PV module efficiency is raised to 23.12% and efficiency of thermal collector beneath the module is reached to 11.29%.