The Experimental Study of the Use of Heatsink and Salt Hydrate as Passive Cooling at Solar Modules

Abstract

Photovoltaic cell formed into solar modules devices are a system for converting solar energy to electrical energy. The performance capability of photovoltaic modules is generally influenced by the several factors, including solar irradiance, type of solar module, temperature and sunlight spectrum. The temperature on the surface of the solar module can have a direct impact on the voltage and current produced by the solar module. One way to reduce the influence of module temperature can be overcome by implementing passive cooling techniques. This research analyzes the comparison of passive cooling system by installing a heatsink and salt hydrate materials to increase the output parameters of solar modules compared to standart module without cooling. The measurement results show that passive cooling system using a heatsinks is better than using salt hydrate. Direct measurements carried out at the research location showed that using a heatsink cooler is able to lower the temperature of the solar module by an average of 3.7⁰C and for salt hydrate cooler is 1.4⁰C, that the heatsink was effective to reducing the average temperature 48.94⁰C  to 45.29⁰C and the salt hydrate material was effective in reducing the average temperature from 48.94⁰C to 47.57⁰C. The average output voltage is 16.34 Volt and the output power reaches 72.79 Watt using heatsink cooling. Then the average output voltage is 15.62 Volt and the output power reaches 66.45 Watt using salt hydratecooling, thus achieving an efficiency of 11.93 % using heatsink and 10.92 % with salt hydrate, compared to standart module without cooling of 10.34 % for an average irradiance of 896.67 Watt/m² at the time of measurement.