Sponsor
This work is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office, under Award Number DE-EE0008168, and was authored in part by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. Funding provided by U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office . The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes.
Published In
Applied Energy
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-2022
Subjects
Photovoltaic power generation -- Industrial applications, Photocatalysis -- Photosensitizer
Abstract
Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems suffer substantial efficiency loss due to environmental and internal heating. However, increasing the canopy height of these systems promotes surface heat transfer and boosts production. This work represents the first wind tunnel experiments to explore this concept in terms of array flow behavior and relative convective heat transfer, comparing model solar arrays of varied height arrangements - a nominal height, extended height, and a staggered height configuration. Analyses of surface thermocouple data show average Nusselt number (ππ’) to increase with array elevation, where panel convection at double height improved up to 1.88 times that of the nominal case. This behavior is an effect of sub-array entrainment of high velocity flow and panel interactions as evidenced through flow statistics and mean kinetic energy budgets on particle image velocimetry (PIV) data. The staggered height arrangement encourages faster sub-panel flow than in the nominal array. Despite sub-array blockage due to the lower panel interaction, heat shedding at panel surfaces promotes improvements on ππ’ over 1.3 times that of the nominal height case.
Rights
This work was authored as part of the Contributor's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Locate the Document
DOI
10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.119819
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/38686
Citation Details
Smith, S. E., Viggiano, B., Ali, N., Silverman, T. J., Obligado, M., Calaf, M., & Cal, R. B. (2022). Increased panel height enhances cooling for photovoltaic solar farms. Applied Energy, 325, 119819.