Hybrid PV/Thermal systems (PV/T) are proposed to harvest the two renewable forms of solar energy,
electrical and thermal. The use of PV/T systems improves electrical efficiency while utilizing the available
solar thermal energy for various heating applications. In this work, numerical simulations perform for
PV/T system in hot climate conditions. The cooling system consists of eleven channels arranged in
parallel to each other on the backside of the PV module. A novel three-dimensional numerical model of
the PV/T system was developed to evaluate the thermal efficiency. The standard k e epsilon model was
used to simulate the flow. This novel system was based on using symmetric-convection boundary
conditions for the right and left sides of the PV/T model and symmetric-symmetric boundary conditions
for the middle cooling channels rather than simulating the whole cooling system. Using one channel
simulation allows the creation of less number of meshes, hence, reduces the computational time. The
thermal efficiency was estimated by the superposition method for all cooling channels of the PV/T
system. The thermal efficiency of the PV/T system was 60% at 0.4 (L/min) and 68% at 5.4 (L/min). The
obtained results were in good agreement with the results presented in the literature.
 

Title

Renewable Energy

Publisher

Elsevier

Publisher Country

United States of America

Indexing

Thomson Reuters

Impact Factor

8.0

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

164

Year

2021

Pages

1320-1333