Comprehensive assessment of the thermal performance, economic viability, and technical aspects of a novel photovoltaic-based heat sink system

Abstract

Even though photovoltaic systems are viable sources of energy production, efficiency is highly affected by surface temperature heat accumulation. Therefore, literature has suggested many strategies to tackle the problem. Attaching fins as a heat sink is among the most common ways by which photovoltaic systems are cooled. Nevertheless, most of the heat sink designs available in the literature encounter problems such as low thermal performance and high weight which causes them to drop over time. Thus, this study tries to design a new heat sink featuring a multi-stage interdigitated crimped truncated fin. The study conducts numerical analysis, outdoor experiment, economic, and technical feasibility assessments to prove that the new design outperforms PV alone and conventional heat sink featuring rectangular fins. The results show that the new design manages heat accumulation better than bare PV and PV with a conventional heat sink. Specifically, it outperforms them in surface temperature reduction (9.6%, 6.8%), electrical efficiency (7.2%, 14%), and power production (7.3%, 14.1%), respectively. Additionally, it records enhancements in the cost of energy by (7.2%, 4.2%) and energy payback period by (7.6%, 2.5%) compared to bare PV and PV with a conventional heat sink. Finally, it has less weight compared to other available designs in the current literature.

Keywords Electrical efficiency; Heat sink fin; Passive cooling; PV cell temperature; PV power conversion efficiency