A Combined Optical, Thermal and Electrical Performance Study of a V-Trough PV System—Experimental and Analytical Investigations

Haitham M. Bahaidarah, Bilal Tanweer, Palanichamy Gandhidasan and Shafiqur Rehman
Additional contact information
Haitham M. Bahaidarah: Center of Research Excellence in Renewable Energy, RI, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran-31261, Saudi Arabia
Bilal Tanweer: Mechanical Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran-31261, Saudi Arabia
Palanichamy Gandhidasan: Mechanical Engineering Department, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran-31261, Saudi Arabia
Shafiqur Rehman: Center for Engineering Research, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran-31261, Saudi Arabia

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-25

Abstract: The objective of this study was to achieve higher efficiency of a PV system while reducing of the cost of energy generation. Concentration photovoltaics was employed in the present case as it uses low cost reflectors to enhance the efficiency of the PV system and simultaneously reduces the cost of electricity generation. For this purpose a V-trough integrated with the PV system was employed for low concentration photovoltaic (LCPV). Since the electrical output of the concentrating PV system is significantly affected by the temperature of the PV cells, the motivation of the research also included studying the ability to actively cool PV cells to achieve the maximum benefit. The optical, thermal and electrical performance of the V-trough PV system was theoretically modeled and validated with experimental results. Optical modeling of V-trough was carried out to estimate the amount of enhanced absorbed radiation. Due to increase in the absorbed radiation the module temperature was also increased which was predicted by thermal model. Active cooling techniques were studied and the effect of cooling was analyzed on the performance of V-trough PV system. With absorbed radiation and module temperature as input parameters, electrical modeling was carried out and the maximum power was estimated. For the V-trough PV system, experiments were performed for validating the numerical models and very good agreement was found between the two.

Keywords: optical model; thermal model; electrical model; experimental analysis; V-trough PV system (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: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/4/2803/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/8/4/2803/ (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:8:y:2015:i:4:p:2803-2827:d:48175

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 ().