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An innovative air-cooling system for efficiency improvement of retrofitted rooftop photovoltaic module using cross-flow fan

1Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

2Advanced Lightning, Power and Energy Research (ALPER) Centre, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

3Electrical and Electronics Department, German Malaysian Institute, Jalan Ilmiah, Taman Universiti, 43000 Kajang, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Received: 23 Oct 2023; Revised: 17 Jan 2024; Accepted: 5 Feb 2024; Available online: 16 Feb 2024; Published: 1 Mar 2024.
Editor(s): H Hadiyanto
Open Access Copyright (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Centre of Biomass and Renewable Energy (CBIORE)
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

This study presents an innovative air-cooling photovoltaic (PV)system using cross-flow fan with speed regulation to optimize performance of rooftop PVsystem in tropical climates like Malaysia. Air passed through the impeller enters perpendicularly to the motor shaft, deflected by the fan blades and evacuated, allowing the fan to operate at its most efficient operating point. The airflow provided within the rear of the PV modules and the roof surface blow out the trapped hot air. Changes in the  module temperature (Tcell) are detected and the fan speed are adjusted accordingly to the PWM. This method was tested for 12 hours continuously from 7:00 am on the existing PV system at German Malaysian Institute (GMI) Bangi. The highest Tcell achieved 72.88 °C and 55.75°C without and with air-cooling system with average power 210.22 W and 246.67 W per peak sun factor (PSF) respectively. There was a 17.34% increase in average power with a 13.18% in average net output power and achieved 6.68% energy efficiency using the proposed cooling system. Tcell increases more swiftly and reaches higher temperatures in the absence of a cooling system, whereas Tcell increases more slowly and at lower temperatures when a cooling system is present. The projected system's power rating was 6.48 W, which is 2.6% per PV module, and it really attained 6.32 W, which is 2.53% per PV module, while total energy consumption by the fan was 51.89 Wh per day, which is only 3.89% per PV module.

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Keywords: uniform air-cooling; cross-flow fan; PV module temperature; cooling technique; photovoltaic

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