Extended Abstract: The Evaluation of Cooling of Solar Panels On-Demand to Increase Power Output and Revenue

This extended abstract presents an experimental investigation into the use of an on-demand cooling system applied to a PV plant to increase the power output and associated revenue generation capability. An experimental test fixture is fabricated to refine and test a novel evaporative solar panel cooling scheme. A method is developed and validated with the experimental results to predict the power and energy increase of a residential and utility scale PV plant from a cooling event. Estimates are made on the potential on-demand cooling event incremental revenue generation Jar actual residential and utility plants. For the utility plant, the potential revenue generation is based on the ability to time the cooling event to coincide with times of high energy market pricing.