The Effect of Jet Impingement on the Performance of a Photovoltaic Module

The cell temperature of a photovoltaic (PV) module increases with increasing irradiation rate, and this increment adversely affects the output power or the electrical efficiency of the PV module. Therefore, in the present study, a series of experiments are performed to investigate the effect of cooling phenomenon on the performance of a PV module. To cool the module, an air impinging jet apparatus is installed at the back side of it. Experiments are performed at various values of flowrate (Q = 100, 200 and 300 LPM, liter per minute) and heat load (qL = 150, 300 and 450 W). A multiple jet configuration is designed with six nozzles, and the dimensionless nozzle-to-plate distance (H / D) is kept constant at 8. It is concluded that the average surface temperature of the PV module can be decreased up to nearly 61.5% and the output power of the PV module can be improved up to 13.2% through the impinging air jet.