Experimental Investigation of Solar Panel Cooling by a Novel Micro Heat Pipe Array

Xiao Tang, Zhenhua Quan, Yaohua Zhao

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DOI: 10.4236/epe.2010.23025                

Abstract

A novel micro heat pipe array was used in solar panel cooling. Both of air-cooling and water-cooling conditions under nature convection condition were investigated in this paper. Compared with the ordinary solar panel, the maximum difference of the photoelectric conversion efficiency is 2.6%, the temperature reduces maximally by 4.7℃, the output power increases maximally by 8.4% for the solar panel with heat pipe using air-cooling, when the daily radiation value is 26.3 MJ. Compared with the solar panel with heat pipe using air-cooling, the maximum difference of the photoelectric conversion efficiency is 3%, the temperature reduces maximally by 8℃, the output power increases maximally by 13.9% for the solar panel with heat pipe using water-cooling, when the daily radiation value is 21.9 MJ.

Keywords

Solar Panel Cooling, Photoelectric Conversion Efficiency, Micro Heat Pipe array

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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