Experimental Investigation on Thermal Performance of Solar Photovoltaic System Integrated with Fins-Enhanced Phase Change Materials

The rise in the temperature of photovoltaic (PV) leads to decrease in the solar to electricity conversion efficiency, therefore, the thermal management of PV becomes important to improve PV power generation. In this paper, paraffin wax with melting temperature of 41 °C was chosen as PCM and was filled into an aluminum rectangular vessel in which vertical fins were used to improve the heat transfer performance. The fins-enhanced PCM system is integrated with PV to moderate its temperature rise and the thermal performance of the developed PV/PCM system at different inclination angles was studied experimentally. It was found that the fins-enhanced PCM system has a good cooling effect on PV. When compared to the PV system without PCM, the addition of the fins-enhanced PCM system to the PV system can reduce the solar-induced temperature rise by about 13 °C at the inclination angle of 60°, and the peak temperature of PV is delayed about 75 min. The temperature drops of PV would lead to a great increase in solar to electrical conversion efficiency.