Investigating the Performance Improvement of a Photovoltaic System in a Tropical Climate using Water Cooling Method

Abstract The performance of a crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) system is greatly reduced with the increase of the temperature of the solar panels, especially in the tropics. In this study, a water-film cooling system was installed onto a retrofitted rooftop PV system, which is operating as a distributed generation system. The experiment shows that this method not only can reduce the thermal stress between the front and the back surfaces of the solar panels, it also minimises the non-uniform distribution of temperature across different positions of the solar panels. Besides, the cooling system with an optimal cooling water flow rate of 6 L/min can improve the power output by 32 W per 260-W-rated-PV-module (15% improvement) and with the net energy gain of 0.0178 kWh/hour/panel at 1150 W/m 2 solar irradiance. In addition, the collected rainwater from the site is sufficient to cover the water needs for the cooling system. This method justifies that the proposed water-cooling method is technically feasible to provide a positive energy generation for a photovoltaic system.