Project Description

Our purpose is to decrease the impact of temperature in the solar panels. Consequently, it led to improve the efficiency of it, and that’s the point of the competition. The sun is the main operator of the system, and it is derived sun radiations, beside heat at the same time high temperature may damage the solar panels.

We came out with the idea to reduce reversable effect of temperature on the solar panel (when it reaches 25o C the productivity will drop by 0.4 to 0.6%), specifically in desert regions.

By using PCM which has several advantages such as more heat transfer in comparison with air and water, latent heat capacity, isotherm process, no electrical drivers, no maintenance and noise with a passive cooling. Furthermore, temperature decreases of photovoltaic-thermal system using paraffin with melting points of 42-44o C as phase change materials to enhance the cell efficiency flow.

In general, our project will be improvement of the solar panel, we will stick the paraffin and aluminum mesh with the back of the solar panel. When temperatures rise, the efficiency of the solar cell decreases. Then the paraffin melts, the temperature of the solar panel decreases, which increases its efficiency. Moreover, aluminum mesh increases the efficiency of the solar panel. Sticking the paraffin and aluminum mesh with the back of solar panel, when temperature rise the efficiency of the solar panel decreases when it reaches 25oC the productivity will drop by 0.4 to 0.6%.

Then the paraffin melt and cool the solar panel, this decreases of energy causes the increase of efficiency. And regarding to aluminum mesh, metals are particularly good conductors of heat so the aluminum here will work to increase the thermal conductivity. Due to both paraffin and metal the productivity will increase by approximately 8%. We are planning to add our improvements to the PV in a way that did not affect the efficiency or the quality of the Solar panels so first thing we’re going to do is selecting the materials that meet these demands and help us to implement our idea successively. We must be very careful when we select the materials and when we add these materials to the Solar panels. Furthermore, we also need to study the perfect ways to add these materials.