Performance Analysis of Single Glazed Solar PVT Air Collector in the Climatic Condition of NE India

Abstract

With the rapid depletion of fossils fuels, opportunities for renewable energy including solar energy are endless. The efficiency of photovoltaic cells to convert the solar energy into electricity drops with the rise in temperature due to increased resistance. Thus, improving the efficiency by lowering the thermal resistance and allowing the cooling fluid (air/water) to flow through photovoltaic thermal (PVT) system is an attractive option. Climate condition based performance of any PVT system varies location wise, and cannot be generalized. Silchar is a city located in Himalayan region has tropical climatic conditions and most of its decentralized villages are out of grid connectivity. Unlike other metro cities of India, PVT will play a critical role for the development of theses villages. Keeping this in mind an attempt is made in the present study to perform an analysis of single glazed solar PVT air collector on the basis of energy and exergy for the climatic conditions of Silchar, India. An analytical model is developed to evaluate the hourly variation of PV cell temperature, cell efficiency, useful thermal heat gain, useful electrical heat gain, energy efficiency and exergy efficiency PVT system. Results depict that efficiency of PV cell decreases with the increase in temperature, and a maximum efficiency of 14.6% for the PV module is found. Out of total useful heat output, the thermal heat output contributes 60.7% while the rest is electrical heat output. Further, magnitude of the heat output is found to increase with the solar radiation and the maximum observed solar ray at around 12:30 h. Trend of both energy and exergy efficiency is similar except the magnitude. Maximum efficiency observed to be 83% and 16.5% for energy and exergy, respectively.

Keywords

• PVT air system
• cell efficiency
• cell temperature
• useful thermal energy
• useful electrical energy
• exergy