Water dynamics simulation in the system pipes of a concentrated photovoltaic-thermal collector solar painel

The use of simulation in order to substitute real-life experiments and tests is a growing trend in all the designing activity all over the world. When the studies involve a continuous change of conditions and materials this solution becomes almost mandatory. In this work, simulations performed with the finite element method are used to study and improve a concentrated photovoltaic-thermal collector manufactured by the SME Solarus AB. The work assesses the behaviour of a new collector configuration, which puts the cooling fluid (water in this case) in counterflow, and compares to the solution obtained in a previous work. Additionally, the time dependency of the irradiance is considered in a next step of the study. This is of crucial importance to understand if the dynamic aspects of all processes under analysis are respected in order to validate, or not, the results obtained for the stationary conditions.