Thermal Performance Assessment and Validation of High-Concentration Photovoltaic Solar Cell Module

A high-concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) system with high optic-electric transition efficiency was developed in order to increase the electrical energy generated by a photovoltaic system. However, device temperature rises quickly because of the solar cell operating under concentrated-light operation conditions. Therefore, system output power or energy-conversion efficiency decreases as the temperature of the cell incorporated within the system increases. Consequently, thermal management has become an important issue for HCPV solar cell package. In this paper, the finite element (FE) analysis was used to initially establish a detailed FE model of the HCPV solar cell package as a baseline model. Moreover, the dissipation power of the solar cell obtained by employing a predicted function is applied. Outdoor experiments were also performed to validate the baseline FE model with the estimated dissipation power. After validation of the simulation, an analysis of the thermal performance variations under different HCPV solar cell package design parameters was performed. Simulation results of different design parameters revealed that the geometry of the heat sink plate played an important role in the thermal management of the HCPV solar cell package.