Floating photovoltaic module temperature estimation: Modeling and comparison

Md Atiqur Rahaman, Terrence L. Chambers, Afef Fekih, Giovana Wiecheteck, Gabriel Carranza and Gustavo Rafael Collere Possetti

Renewable Energy, 2023, vol. 208, issue C, 162-180

Abstract: As the power demand increases, photovoltaic (PV) energy evolves with time, and besides the traditional ground-mounted and roof-based PV systems, floating photovoltaic (FPV) systems have gained popularity due to higher efficiency from lower module temperatures and water evaporation reductions. This paper estimates and compares the temperature of the floating PV module using thermal, empirical, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. The dynamic thermal model considers a three-level energy-balance equation for the FPV module. From that, a simplified thermal model has been developed, which requires fewer parameters and is easier to estimate the module temperature. Secondly, the least squares regression was used to generate the empirical model, resulting in the smallest possible root mean square error when comparing the observed and predicted values. Finally, the FPV system has been developed in the COMSOL environment for CFD analysis using the same heat transfer method. The estimated results from the models were compared with the actual data collected from a Brazilian site and the existing FPV and ground-mounted temperature models. The RMSE performance of the FPV models was comparable to that of the data obtained from an installed FPV system and performed much better than other similar FPV models and their ground-based counterparts.

Keywords: Floating photovoltaic (FPV) system; Thermal model; Dynamic modeling; Computational fluid dynamics model; Empirical model; Module temperature (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148123003713
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:renene:v:208:y:2023:i:c:p:162-180

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2023.03.076

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

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