Design and analysis of passively cooled floating photovoltaic systems

Floating photovoltaic systems deployable on ponds, lakes and water bodies are an attractive solution in photovoltaic cell technology with several advantages with respect to land-based installations, including a reduced expensive land investment required, reduced water evaporation, and suppression of algae growth. Moreover, the water body can be exploited as a heat sink for the thermal management of the photovoltaic cells, thereby decreasing the operating temperature and increasing efficiency. High operating temperatures are in fact one of the major problems in photovoltaic cells, which can degrade photovoltaic panels' electrical efficiency and service life. Recent research has demonstrated the potential of natural convection cooling loops for the thermal management of floating photovoltaic systems. Using numerical simulations combined with experiments, we show how sensitive is the performance of the natural convection cooling loop to the height of the coolant reservoir, which can then be used as a design parameter to maximise the cooling effectiveness of the photovoltaic module, with a consequent increase in electrical efficiency of 17.84% with respect to the base design without cooling.