Energy, exergy and efficiency of four photovoltaic thermal collectors with different energy storage material

Hybrid photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) is a technology with many variations and designs. The aim of this unit is cooling down PV temperature while producing hot water. In this paper, different PV/T designs are compared in terms of energy, exergy and efficiency. Data from experiments and numerical calculations conducted at Bangi, Malaysia was used for the comparisons. The proposed systems were tested in outdoor conditions. The designs in question are water-based PV/T, water-based PV/T with PCM tank, nanofluid-based PV/T with nano-PCM tank and conventional PV module. Effect of mass flow rate and solar irradiance are emphasized in this paper. The highest thermal efficiency, thermal energy and electrical exergy produced are found for PV/T with nanofluids and nano-PCM with around 72%, 14 kW and 76.152, respectively. All PV/T systems proposed exhibit better performance than the conventional PV module. These findings highlight the utility of PV/T technology and its massive potential to energize and popularize the solar energy field.