Date of Award

16-4-2024

Document Type

Thesis

School

School of Electrical & Electroncis Engineering

Programme

Ph.D.-Doctoral of Philosophy

First Advisor

C.K.Sundarabalan

Keywords

Solar, PV, Cooling, Degradation, Techno-Economic

Abstract

World Energy Council has predicted that the global electricity demand will peak in 2030. The need for renewable energy has grown rapidly due to the rising energy demand in this ever-growing population. Green house gas emissions are predominantly due to the energy generation and consumption of fossil fuels. On the other hand, fossil fuels supply nearly 74% of India's energy demand, making India one of the world's largest coal consumers.

According to World Resource Institute, India ranks fourth in the world in terms of carbon emissions. Investments in renewable energy sources and energy-saving technologies should be part of a solution to lower these emissions. Amongst sustainable energy sources, energy from the sun can be considered one of the vital sustainable solutions for meeting the energy demand. Solar energy conversion technologies can be classified into two primary sources: solar thermal and solar photovoltaic (PV). This work mainly focused on PV systems.

Variations in atmospheric conditions, such as solar irradiance and temperature, significantly impact solar PV output power. Therefore, it's crucial to understand how temperature and solar radiation affect PV panels. However, the data sheets provided by module manufacturing firms only reveal the electrical properties of the PV module under the standard test conditions (STC) of 1000 W/m2 solar radiation level, 25oC cell temperature, and 1.5 air mass rate.

Therefore, the electrical characteristics of the PV module that differ from the STC are unknown. Hence, there is a need to study the various parameters affecting the solar PV module's solar irradiance and temperature and how they affect the system's economics. This research has been focused on the techno-economic performance of solar PV.

The first phase of the study presents the economic analysis of the cleaning frequency of solar PV. By performing an experimental investigation on a solar photovoltaic module under clean, dust, and shadow conditions, the reduced electrical power produced was estimated compared to the clean panel. From the results, it is clear that there is a substantial decrease in output power (40 % in the case of dust panels and 80 % in the case of shadow panels) compared to that of the cleaned solar panel. The effect of dust can be mitigated only by cleaning the PV module, whereas the proper placement of PV modules can avoid the effect of shadow. The frequency of cleaning has to be reduced as much as possible so that the process of cleaning the PV module can be done at a cost-effective rate.

Measuring the dust accumulating every time on the panel is challenging in deciding the cleaning frequency. In order to overcome this challenge, the experiment is carried out with three different dust levels in order to establish a correlation between the output power and the dust level. Using this correlation, the frequency of cleaning has been determined for different dust levels.

Solar photovoltaic system efficiency depends on the wavelength of the solar radiation. The second phase of the work consisted of an experimental investigation utilising filter papers of different colours to assess their economic benefit. Five different colour filters have been used, and their corresponding temperatures and output powers have been measured. The economic gains of the PV system with and without colour filters have been evaluated with an initial degradation rate of 0.5% per year and 0.8% per year to demonstrate the improvement in output power under the influence of colour filters.

The third phase of the study presents the techno-economic analysis of numerous passive cooling strategies to determine the best passive cooling approach for PV modules. The analysis deals with various cooling techniques such as coir pith material, Phase Change Material (PCM), and greenhouse net cooling. Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) Pro software has been utilized to compare the economics of the system with passive cooling techniques under study to show the efficacy of the cooling techniques.

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