Radiation regulation of silicon photovoltaic modules for effective thermal management: A potential analysis

Tao Li, Tao Ma, Kun Yu and Jinqing Peng

Applied Energy, 2025, vol. 399, issue C, No S0306261925012000

Abstract: Enhancing the radiative cooling capacity or reflecting all the sub-bandgap photons to realize effective thermal management has elicited great interest. Numerous related investigations of the enhancement have been covered in literature, while the photoelectric conversion along with the working conditions still exhibit significant variability, and the mechanisms through enhancing heat dissipation or suppressing heat generation are entirely distinct. Herein, a comprehensive potential analysis is conducted on the radiation regulation technologies. Building upon our simulation framework, a modified thermal network with refined fifteen nodes that cover the entire structure of the PV module is integrated, enabling precise determination of the temperature trend. Accordingly, the basic properties of the PV module and the energy distribution are calculated, along with the power change of heat generation and dissipation of the module. The optimization mechanisms behind the temperature decline are revealed, and the practical temperature reductions under different working conditions are determined for reference. The results reveal that, for a silicon PV module, the radiation regulation scheme through rejecting all the non-contribution solar photons can eliminate below bandgap loss and suppress parasitic absorption and is much more efficient than enhancing its radiative cooling capacity. The average temperature reductions can reach up to 2.86 °C, 3.75 °C, and 4.60 °C respectively by rejecting all non-contribution photons compared to the original module with the incoming solar irradiance intensity of 600, 800, and 1000 W/m2, while the values decrease to 0.68 °C, 0.77 °C and 0.86 °C if only the emissivity is improved to unity, and further drop to 0.64 °C, 0.70 °C and 0.78 °C if the sub-bandgap reflection capacity has been improved. Additionally, all the performance enhancements will be diminished with the wind speed, and enhancing emissivity is more suitable to be applied in hot environment, whereas reflecting useless photons prefers cold.

Keywords: Radiation regulation; Thermal management; Radiative cooling; Sub-bandgap reflection; Heat dissipation; Temperature reduction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261925012000
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:399:y:2025:i:c:s0306261925012000

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2025.126470

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().