Enhancing the performance of BICPV systems using phase change materials

Tahir, Asif A; Sharma, Shivangi; Sellami, Nazmi; Reddy, KS; Mallick, Tapas K

Abstract

Building Integrated Concentrated Photovoltaic (BICPV) systems have three main benefits for integration into built environments, namely, (i) generating electricity at the point of use (ii) allowing light efficacy within the building envelope and (iii) providing thermal management. In this work, to maintain solar cell operating temperature and improve its performance, a phase change material (PCM) container has been designed, developed and integrated with the BICPV system. Using highly collimated continuous light source, an indoor experiment was performed. The absolute electrical power conversion efficiency for the module without PCM cooling resulted in 7.82% while using PCM increased it to 9.07%, thus showing a relative increase by 15.9% as compared to a non- PCM system. A maximum temperature reduction of 5.2°C was also observed when the BICPV module was integrated with PCM containment as compared to the BICPV system without any PCM containment.
REFERENCES

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: 11 th International Conference on Concentrator Photovoltaic Systems (CPV-11)
• Start Date: Apr 13, 2015
• End Date: Apr 15, 2015
• Acceptance Date: Sep 27, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Sep 28, 2015
• Publication Date: 2015
• Deposit Date: Dec 12, 2021
• Print ISSN: 0094-243X
• Electronic ISSN: 1551-7616
• Publisher: AIP Publishing
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1679
• Issue: 1
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4931557
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2818487