The results of the photovoltaic panel with the pulsed-spray water cooling system are compared with the steady-spray water cooling system and the uncooled photovoltaic panel. A cost analysis is also conducted to determine the financial benefits of employing the new cooling systems for the photovoltaic panels.
Cooling the PV panels by water every 1 °C rise in temperature will lead to the fact that the energy produced from the PV panels will be consumed by the continuous operation of the water pump.
An experimental setup has been developed to study the effect of cooling by water on the performance of photovoltaic (PV) panels of a PV power plant. The PV power plant is installed in the German University in Cairo (GUC) in Egypt. The total peak power of the plant is 14 kW.
Akbarzadeh and Wadowski designed a hybrid PV/T solar system and found that cooling the solar photovoltaic panel with water increases the solar cells output power by almost 50%.
Therefore, it is concluded that the proposed cooling system could solve the problem of overheating the PV panels due to excessive solar radiation and maintain the efficiency of the panels at an acceptable level by the least possible amount of water.
Thus, the system developed in this work provides an attractive solution for solar farms to cool PV panels and simultaneously produces clean water that can be used for cleaning the dust from PV panels and/or for potable purposes. This work has successfully applied the atmospheric water sorption–desorption cycle to cooling a PV panel.