Experimental investigations on thermal management and performance improvement of solar PV panel using a phase change material

This paper experimentally investigates the thermal management and performance improvement of solar PV panel with the help of a Phase Change Material (PCM). The two solar PV panels of 30 Watts nominal power and same configuration were selected for the experiments. The candle making wax (CMW) was chosen to be the PCM. One PV panel named as PV1, which was tested without any physical modification and another panel (named as PV2) was tested after integrating with the PCM at the back side. The solar PV panels were experimented in a solar day from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Their panel surface temperature and the electrical efficiencies were observed and compared. The results proved that the PCM reduced the panel surface temperature by 24.24% and decreased the maximum panel temperature by 17.57%. In addition to this, the hourly efficiency of the panel was enhanced by 4.43% and daily efficiency was boosted by 6.34% with the aid of PCM.