Design and experimental study of thermal storage PV/T/PCM solar collector

In order to improve photoelectric thermal characteristics and practicability of PV/T collectors, a thermal storage PV/T/PCM solar collector was designed. Flexible copper indium gallium diselenide (CIGS) solar cells was applied in the collector to relieve the impact of operating temperature rise of the heat absorbing plate on the conversion efficiency of the solar cells, and solid phase change material was prepared to simplify integration process of the PV/T/PCM collector. In the meantime, PV/T/PCM solar collector system prototype was designed. The experimental results showed that the temperature of the absorber plate and solar cells of PV/T/PCM system was reduced by 15°C and 20°C respectively compared with PV/T system, while thermal efficiency was increased by 21%. Meanwhile, in PV/T/PCM, the absorber plate had a lower temperature than the solar cells, which thus achieved the purpose of reducing the influence of the absorber plate on solar cells temperature. In addition, the solar cells output power of the PV/T/PCM collector system was increased by 6.7% compared to PV/T collector system.