Title: Performance enhancement and exergy analysis of an aluminium reflector-assisted modification in existing PV system

Authors: Aman Sharma; Vijay Kumar Bajpai

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, India ' Mechanical Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, India

Abstract: Carbon dioxide emissions have risen sharply in recent years, and the solution is to switch to carbon-free energy sources. One of the renewable technologies with bright prospects is solar PV. To maximise performance, increasing the amount of irradiation and maintaining the operating temperature is required. This study suggests an easy modification for an existing solar PV system, with a combination of a single, dual aluminium reflector and spray cooling. NIT Kurukshetra is the site of the present investigation; a water spray recirculation system has been designed. Experiments were run comparing the performance of a reference configuration to those run with a single and a dual reflector. When using just one reflector and intermittent cooling, the average power generation efficiency increase was 5.74% compared to the reference system and when using a dual aluminium reflector with intermittent cooling it was 10.53%. An economic analysis and exergy analysis of the two methods and their comparison have also been made.

Keywords: renewable energy; solar energy; single aluminium reflector; dual aluminium reflector; temperature-controlled spray cooling; exergy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEX.2023.133998

International Journal of Exergy, 2023 Vol.41 No.4, pp.431 - 448

Received: 19 May 2023
Accepted: 07 Aug 2023
Published online: 09 Oct 2023 *

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