Performance analysis of single glazed solar PVT air collector in the climatic condition NE India: An analytical study

With the rapid depletion of fossils fuels, scope for renewable energy like solar energy is huge. The efficiency of photovoltaic cells to convert the solar energy into electricity drops with the rise in temperature due to increased resistance. Thus improving the efficiency by lowering the thermal resistance and allowing the cooling fluid (air/water) to flow through photovoltaic thermal (PVT) system is an attractive engineering problem. In the present study, performance analysis of single glazed solar PVT air collector on the basis of energy and exergy has been analyzed for the climatic conditions of Silchar, India for the month of May, 2017. An analytical model is developed to evaluate the hourly variation of PV cell temperature, cell efficiency, useful thermal heat gain, useful electrical heat gain, energy efficiency and exergy efficiency PVT system. Results depict that efficiency of PV cell decreases with the increase in temperature, and a maximum efficiency of 14.6% for the PV module is found. Out of total useful heat output, electrical heat output contributes 67% while the rest is thermal heat output. Further, magnitude of both the heat output is found to increase with the solar radiation and the maximum is observed at around 1230 hrs. Trend of both energy and exergy efficiency is similar except the magnitude. Maximum efficiency observed to be 69% and 16.5% for energy and exergy respectively.