Contactless phase change material based photovoltaic module cooling: A statistical approach by clustering and correlation algorithm

By maintaining the photovoltaic(PV) module at its nominal operating temperature (T_PV) in a sustainable way, we can enhance the total efficiency of the PV system. This study focuses on the effect of phase change material (PCM) as coolant medium in controlling the raise of photovoltaic module temperature during operation. The numerical simulations were performed for a detailed establishing in a contactless PCM based cooling technology, by comparing different PCMs, their melting temperatures, their thicknesses, and effect of solar irradiance. The results show that photovoltaic module cooling can be achieved for all solar irradiance cases by using contactless PCM modes. But the Cooling effectiveness of PCM is found to reduce beyond thickness of 1 cm, which makes it an optimal range for radiation based PV module cooling technique. Subsequently, this optimized Rubitherm (RT25HC) PCM container shows the peak temperature difference (ΔT_PV) of 6 K and 10 K under solar irradiance of 300 W m⁻² and 500 W m⁻² respectively. Following that using Rubitherm 55HC and Rubitherm 35HC, 16 K and 11.5 K temperature difference (ΔT_PV) at 800 W/m² respectively, and 19 K, 15 K and 12 K for 1000 W m⁻² using Rubitherm 25HC, 35HC and 44HC respectively are observed. Our study proves that, the increase in solar irradiance influences on both melting temperature of PCM and the PV module temperature. Further in our study, thermal profiles of the photovoltaic modules are analysed in detail using statistical method to understand (i) the correlation between different PCM and thicknesses (ii) z-score normal distribution of PCM assisted PV module temperature across different thicknesses and (iii) clustering algorithms to find the average PV module temperature reduction across all the PCM at different irradiances.