SUBMITTED BY
KADAM VISHWAJIT
PATIL ABHISHEK
INGLE RUSHIKESH
TAMBARE AKASH
Fabrication and experimental analysis of solar panel
water cooling system

Contents
 Aim
 What?
 Why cooling of pv panel
 Introduction
 Types of cooling system
 Schematics of cooling system
 Liquid based cooling
 Fabrication process
 Designing a Cooling system
 Working
 Experimental Setup
 Challenges and future outline
 Advantage and limitations
 Conclusion
 References

What ?
 What is solar energy ?
Solar energy is the energy, the earth receives from the sun, primarily as
visible light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation.
 What is solar panel?
Photovoltaic or (PV) for short is a solar power technology that uses solar cell
or solar photovoltaic arrays to convert light from the sun directly into electricity.
Solar cell produces direct current electricity from light, which can be used to
power equipment or to recharge a battery.

 Cooling of given space using water and air as a medium
 Increase the efficiency of solar panel
Challenges :
 Energy Saving:
One of the most important global challenge.
 Efficiency :
Increase the efficiency of solar panel
Increase the power output and performance
Aim

Why Cooling of PV panel ?
 The electrical efficiency of
photovoltaic cell decreases
significantly with the increase of
operating temperature of the cell and
this cell produces a lot of heat while
converting solar energy to electric
energy.
 This increase is associated with the
absorbed sunlight that is converted
into heat, resulting in reduced power
output, energy efficiency, performance
and life of the panel.
 The use of cooling techniques can
offer a potential solution to avoid
excessive heating of P.V. panels and to
reduce cell temperature.

Introduction
 The use of solar energy is growing rapidly as it is clean and green energy.
 Solar energy can be converted to electrical energy through various method.
 One of the most prominent method is using PV cell to convert solar energy to
electrical energy through direct solar radiance.
 One of the main obstacles of PV is overheating due to excessive solar radiation
and high ambient temperatures.
 Overheating reduces the efficiency of the panels dramatically.
 It is found that solar panel with water cooling generates more energy than the
one without cooling.

Types of cooling system
 Air-based cooling
 Liquid based cooling
 Heat pipe
 Heat sink/fins/extended surfaces/heat exchange
 Phase change material (conductive)
 Nano-fluid based cooling
 Evaporative cooling
 Hybrid/multi-concept cooling systems

Schematics of cooling system

Liquid Based Cooling
 In this cooling system water is used as a medium.
 In this project an automated water cooling system is developed which
automatically sprayed water on the solar panel to prevent temperature rise and
monitor the cell temperature.
 This project also demonstrated if this cooling system would be effective
enough to increase the overall output of the panel.

Fabrication Process
 The main fabrication process can be divided into three steps:
(i) Designing a Cooling system
(ii) Implementing in experimental setup
(iii) Getting the data by power output of solar cell

Working
 Utilization temperature controller to maintain solar panel
temperature..
 Water & air flow is arranged in counter flow.
 Solar panel will charge battery and on battery our complete system
will work.
 For water circulation pump will be used.
 For air circulation dc air blower will be used.
[3]

Designing Cooling system

Experimental Setup
• The cooling system consisted of some instruments. These components are
very important to make the project a success.
• Solar Panel : Solar panels absorb the sunlight as a source of energy to
generate electricity or heat.
• Photovoltaic modules use light energy (photons) from the Sun to generate
electricity through the photovoltaic effect.

Battery :
• The first Batteries in solar applications have to meet the demands of
unstable grid energy, heavy cycling (charging and discharging) and
irregular full recharging.
• Considerations for choosing a battery include cost, cycle life and
installation and maintenance.
• The batter is used to power the control system and the water pump.
Pump :
• This solar cooling system included a miniature water pump which is one of
the core components of this project.
• The pump elevated the water head and supplied it to the solar panel
through spray.
• Here in this system the pump was actually floating on the water reservoir
and the suction pipe thus always in contact with water.

Temperature Sensor :
 It senses temperature from the solar panel and sends it to the microcontroller which will
activate the water pump in a certain temperature to prevent the temperature rise.
Solar Radiation Meter :
 Solar Radiation meter is the device which measures the solar intensity of solar energy in
watt per square meter unit. In this project it is used to collect the solar irradiation.
Digital Thermometer and Multi-meter :
 A multi-meter was used in this project to measure the output voltage of the solar panel.
Also a digital Temperature meter was used to directly get the solar panel surface
temperature.

Challenges and future outline
 It is important to design system depending on multiple factors,
such as module orientation, location and cooling system
components
 The high surface area to cool with due consideration to the
extremely low power output per module.
 Air and water-based technologies are fairly mature, and have
already been widely documented, among all cooling system.
However, refrigerant-based systems and heat pipes continue to
undergo, but there are still some technical/cost issues prohibiting
their large scale use.
[4]

Advantages & Limitations
Advantages :
 Increase in efficiency of solar panel
 It increases the performance and life of solar panel
 Low operating cost.
Limitations :
 Excessive absorption of heat leads to damage the solar panel.
 It reduces the power output.
 Maintenance of working components such as pump

Conclusion
• The aim of this study was to compare the most promising PV cooling methods,
with the hope to gain proper scope in design, application and future
development of cooling techniques in photovoltaic systems. The following are
the significant findings from the analysis of the different P.V. cooling systems.
• The findings revealed that active water cooling is the easiest and effective
cooling technique and should continue to be pursued. However, active water
cooling is often not practical. For worthwhile active water cooling the
environment must have a steady supply of cool water, and the array to be
cooled must be large to offset the energy consumption.
• The passive cooling of the P.V. system using natural convection has been
observed to be the simplest way; That being said, this technique has limited
possibilities. Furthermore, the air is a less effective coolant than water.
• Cooling systems based on water are more ideal for application where hot water
and energy requirements match like restaurants, hotels and process industries.

References
1. Akbarzadeh A.Wadowski T., Heat-pipe-based cooling systems for photovoltaic
cells under concentrated solar radiation, Applied Therm. Eng.16(1):81-7,1996
2. Kluth A., Using water as a coolant to increase solar panel efficiency,
California State science fair, California, USA, April 2008.
3. Batoul H., Flow simulation improves photovoltaic solar panel performance,
Technical Report, Schueco International, Paris, France, September 2008.
4. Tonui JK, Tripanagnostopoulos Y., Improved PV/T solar collectors with heat
extraction by forced or natural air circulation. Renew Energy;32:623–37, 2007
5. Rodrigues EMG, Mel´cio Mendes VMF, Catala˜ o JPS. Simulation of a solar
cell considering single-diode equivalent circuit model. In: International
conference on renewable energies and power quality, Spain, 13–15.

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