Review of Advanced Air-Based PV Cooling Technique

Photovoltaic is a renewable energy that can convert solar irradiance into electrical energy. Many environmental factors affect photovoltaic performance, including solar radiation, shading, temperature, humidity, wind, etc. Some of the radiation that falls on the surface of the photovoltaic module is converted into electrical energy, while the rest is absorbed in the photovoltaic cell so that it can cause an increase in the surface temperature of the photovoltaic module. Excessive photovoltaic surface temperature and high ambient temperature result in a significant decrease in the efficiency and lifetime of the photovoltaic module. Therefore, the use of cooling techniques is used to overcome these problems. This paper presents a review of air-based cooling techniques that can optimize photovoltaic performance. There are many methods of air-based cooling techniques including natural air cooling, forced air cooling and photovoltaic thermal systems. The method that can provide many benefits is the photovoltaic thermal system because it can produce electrical energy and heat energy but the system is more complicated and the cost is higher than other techniques, while the most effective is forced air cooling by improving the heat exchanger but the net energy output is obtained from energy the resulting photovoltaic is reduced by the use of external energy. While the natural air cooling method is the cheapest and simplest but the temperature transfer rate is low so it does not provide a high increase in photovoltaic performance.