<p>Photovoltaic (PV) cells have become an increasingly ubiquitous
technology; however, concentrating photovoltaics (CPV), despite their higher
theoretical efficiencies and lower costs, have seen much more limited adoption. Recent
literature indicates that thermal management is a key challenge in CPV systems. If not
addressed, it can negatively impact efficiency and reliability (lifetime). Traditional
cooling methods for CPV use heat sinks, forced air convection or liquid cooling, which
can induce an extremely large convection area, or parasite electric consumption. In
addition, the moving parts in cooling system usually result in a shorter life time
and higher expense for maintenance. Therefore, there is a need for an improved cooling
technology that enables significant improvement in CPV systems. As a passive and
compact cooling mechanism, radiative cooling utilizes the transparency window
of the atmosphere in the long wavelength infrared. It enables direct heat exchange
between objects on earth’s surface with outer space. Since radiated power is
proportional to the difference of the fourth powers of the temperatures of PV and ambient,
significantly greater cooling powers can be realized at high temperatures,
compared with convection and conduction. These qualities make radiative cooling a promising
method for thermal management of CPV. In this work, experiments show that a
temperature drop of 36 degree C have been achieved by radiative cooling, which results in an
increase of 0.8 V for open-circuit voltage of GaSb solar cell. The corresponding
simulations also reveal the physics behind radiative cooling and give a thorough analysis
of the cooling performance.</p>
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:purdue.edu/oai:figshare.com:article/11328182 |
| Date | 06 December 2019 |
| Creators | Ze Wang (8088254) |
| Source Sets | Purdue University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, Thesis |
| Rights | CC BY 4.0 |
| Relation | https://figshare.com/articles/Radiative_Passive_Cooling_for_Concentrated_Photovoltaics/11328182 |
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