An investigation into the passive cooling of photovoltaic cells under concentrated illumination

An investigation into the passive cooling of photovoltaic cells under concentrated illumination

In Taiwan, 98% energy demand depends on import supplies. However, the prices of fossil energy keep going up because the resources are limited. Therefore, more and more reusable energy resources have to be developed. At present, the governments focus actively on the renewable energy projects, which include mainly the wind energy, solar energy, biomass energy and fuel cells. In recent years, in order to increase electrical energy generated by a photovoltaic system, the researches of the high concentration photovoltaic (HCPV) system technology which has high efficiency have been developed quickly. HCPV system is mainly composed of concentrating device, high-efficiency solar cell, and tracking system. The difference in structure between HCPV solar cells and traditional solar cells is the usage of concentrated-light module to enhance the optic-electric transition efficiency. However, the temperature of the module will be risen under the conditions for the high-concentrating sunlight in the HCPV system, which is a big problem that influences the efficiency of the solar cell. Many researchers have shown that the photovoltaic cell energy-conversion efficiency decreases with increasing temperature of the module. Therefore, cooling of photovoltaic cells is one of the main concerns when designing concentrating photovoltaic systems.