BAPV arrays: Side-by-side comparison with and without fan cooling

Author

Chatterjee, Saurabh ; TamizhMani, Govindasamy

Author_Institution

Photovoltaic Reliability Lab., Arizona State Univ., Mesa, AZ, USA

fYear

2012

fDate

3-8 June 2012

Abstract

The hot stagnant air underneath the BAPV (building applied photovoltaics) arrays can be extracted to improve the array lifetime, performance and thermal uniformity, and can also be used for residential space heating and water heating. This work is an effort to compare and understand the effect of fan cooling on the temperature of rooftop photovoltaic modules by comparing two side-by-side arrays (control array without fan cooling and test array with fan cooling) under identical ambient conditions of irradiance, air temperature, wind speed and wind direction. This work investigates the effect of fan cooling on the performance, thermal uniformity under low/high wind speed conditions and the thermal models previously developed at Arizona State University.

Keywords

building integrated photovoltaics; cooling; space heating; water; Arizona State University; BAPV arrays; air temperature; array lifetime; building applied photovoltaics arrays; control array; fan cooling; hot stagnant air; irradiance; residential space heating; rooftop photovoltaic modules; side-by-side arrays; side-by-side comparison; thermal uniformity; water heating; wind direction; wind speed; Cooling; Photovoltaic systems; Temperature; Temperature measurement; Wind speed; Building applied photovoltaics; rooftop PV; thermal effect;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2012 38th IEEE

Conference_Location

Austin, TX

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0064-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2012.6317672

Filename

6317672