Cooling Methods for Standard and Floating PV Panels

Arnas Majumder, Amit Kumar, Roberto Innamorati, Costantino Carlo Mastino, Giancarlo Cappellini, Roberto Baccoli and Gianluca Gatto ()
Additional contact information
Arnas Majumder: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy
Amit Kumar: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy
Roberto Innamorati: Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (DiCAAR), University of Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy
Costantino Carlo Mastino: Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (DiCAAR), University of Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy
Giancarlo Cappellini: Department of Physics, University of Cagliari, CNR-IOM SLACS and ETSF, Cittadella Universitaria di Monserrato, Strada Prov.le Monserrato-Sestu, km 0.700, Monserrato, 09042 Cagliari, Italy
Roberto Baccoli: Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (DiCAAR), University of Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy
Gianluca Gatto: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, 09123 Cagliari, Italy

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 24, 1-28

Abstract: Energy and water poverty are two main challenges of the modern world. Most developing and underdeveloped countries need more efficient electricity-producing sources to overcome the problem of potable water evaporation. At the same time, the traditional way to produce energy/electricity is also responsible for polluting the environment and damaging the ecosystem. Notably, many techniques have been used around the globe, such as a photovoltaic (PV) cooling (active, passive, and combined) process to reduce the working temperature of the PV panels (up to 60 °C) to improve the system efficiency. For floating photovoltaic (FPV), water cooling is mainly responsible for reducing the panel temperature to enhance the production capacity of the PV panels, while the system efficiency can increase up to around 30%. At the same time, due to the water surface covering, the water loss due to evaporation is also minimized, and the water evaporation could be minimized by up to 60% depending on the total area covered by the water surfaces. Therefore, it could be the right choice for generating clean and green energy, with dual positive effects. The first is to improve the efficiency of the PV panels to harness more energy and minimize water evaporation. This review article focuses mainly on various PV and FPV cooling methods and the use and advantages of FPV plants, particularly covering efficiency augmentation and reduction of water evaporation due to the installation of PV systems on the water bodies.

Keywords: photovoltaic (PV); PV cooling; floating PV; FPV cooling; solar energy; efficiency; evaporation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/24/7939/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/24/7939/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:16:y:2023:i:24:p:7939-:d:1295328

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().