Influence of Artificial and Natural Cooling on Performance Parameters of a Solar PV System: A Case Study

Contribution of renewable energy in overall power generation is eagerly welcomed by all nations to mitigate the carbon emission. Solar Photovoltaic based power generation is a rapid progressing technology. Although drop in efficiency due to rise in Photovoltaic (PV) module temperature, is yet a significant loss which is highly site dependent. The most common approach does not include natural wind cooling effect while others are not commonly applied to estimate the module temperature during performance evaluation, which leads to error in forecasting, large area requirement for same power generation, more money investment as well as large payback period. Temperature and natural wind cooling highly affects the PV module performance, thus it becomes important to study and evaluate the performance of PV module in local conditions. In this work an attempt is made to observe the effect of natural cooling on PV module performance. The case study includes the performance ratio for simulation and experimental conditions considering artificial cooling. On another hand performance ratio is also evaluated for simulation and experimental conditions considering natural cooling. This study evaluates various errors, invested cost, annual units, annual recovery, payback time and return on investment to emphasize on local site dependent performance. An improved performance for various performance parameters is observed considering the natural cooling effect.