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Experimental study on the electrical performance of a solar photovoltaic panel by water immersion

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Abstract

The decreased efficiency of a photovoltaic panel due to temperature rise during high solar radiation is one of the major drawbacks. The efficiency drop is due to hotness, which restricts the conversion of incident sun rays into electricity by the silicon cells. Thus, a photovoltaic panel has a negative temperature coefficient that increases the current but drops the voltage potential. In this work, water immersion cooling of the photovoltaic panel is studied to improve panel performance. The module is studied with and without water immersion in a tank made up of acrylic material. The photovoltaic (PV) efficiency is determined at different depths of water immersion (10 to 40 mm) inside the acrylic tank. The solar radiation and thermal and electrical parameters of PV are observed at an interval of 60 min, and besides, the solar radiation is also measured. The electrical efficiency without immersion is about 14.24% at solar radiation of about 725 W/m2. The photovoltaic panel was observed at a temperature of around 30 °C during the water immersion. The panel efficiency with an immersion depth of 10, 20, 30, and 40 mm is approximately 15.02%, 15.54%, 14.58%, and 13.95%, respectively. The results show that the immersion of PV panels in tap water 20 mm increases the PV efficiency by 9.1% compared to the PV without water immersion. The presented experimental results are beneficial to the solar community to improve the PV performance without external power.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the SRM Institute of Science and Technology for contributing the required infrastructure to carry out this research work.

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All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, SRM Institute of Science and Technology, Kattankulathur, Chennai, India

    Baskaran Sivakumar, Subramanian Navakrishnan, Menaka Ravi Cibi & Ramalingam Senthil

Authors
  1. Baskaran Sivakumar
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  2. Subramanian Navakrishnan
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  3. Menaka Ravi Cibi
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  4. Ramalingam Senthil
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Contributions

Baskaran Sivakumar: conceptualization, methodology, investigation. Subramanian Navakrishnan: investigation and data collection, data analysis. Menaka Ravi Cibi: data collection, validation and formal analysis. Ramalingam Senthil: methodology, data curation, writing—original draft preparation, writing, reviewing and editing, supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ramalingam Senthil.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Highlights

• The water immersion of solar PV reduces the panel temperature significantly.

• The water immersion depth of 20 mm improves electrical efficiency by about 9.1%.

• Submerged solar PV minimizes the land-dependability installations.

• The immersed solar PV is observed as one of the effective cooling methods.

• An optimum immersion depth of PV is essential for heat dissipation.

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Sivakumar, B., Navakrishnan, S., Cibi, M.R. et al. Experimental study on the electrical performance of a solar photovoltaic panel by water immersion. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 42981–42989 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15228-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15228-z

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