SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENT OF COOLING SYSTEM FOR FLOATING PHOTOVOLTAIC MODULE WITH THERMOSIPHON METHOD

• Main Author: SUTANTO - NIM: 23116301, BAYU
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/26047
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

<p align="justify">The increasing of global energy demand, limited fossil fuel resources, and environmental issue has led to the optimization of renewable energy utilization. Solar energy is unlimited, free, and eco-friendly energy source. However, the wide land requirement is one of the vital problem in the developing of solar power plant. Floating photovoltaic (PV) is an innovative idea to overcome this problem. This research aims to develop floating PV by adding a passive cooling system, that is thermosiphon. First, a comprehensive computational fluid dynamic (CFD) modelling was conducted to ensure whether a thermosiphon cooling system works in floating PV. The transient calculations were performed with all fluid’s properties as functions of temperatur (piecewise-linear). The SIMPLE scheme and laminar model were used to solve the problem. CFD results showed that the thermosiphon cooling system effectively dissipated heat from PV to environment. The experimental analysis was also done to estimate the increasing of power output in thermosiphon-floating PV by varying the height of thermosiphon reservoir. The increasing height of thermosiphon reservoir induced the faster fluid flow in the system and decreased the operating temperatur of PV. Experimental results showed that the power output of floating PV was about 4,52% higher than ground PV. Furthermore, the thermosiphon-floating PV with 125 cm height of thermosiphon reservoir increased the power output about 7,86% higher than ground PV, or it was about 3,34% higher that floating PV.<p align="justify">