Novel thermal conductivity enhancing containers for performance enhancement of solar photovoltaics system integrated with phase change material

Phase change material (PCM) has capability to increase the power production of solar photovoltaics (PV) by effective temperature regulation. In this work, Thermal Conductivity Enhancing Containers (TCEC) are proposed. They allow the PCM to extract the heat from all sides of the containers instead of only front which improves the thermal conductivity of the PCM containers and increases the PV electrical efficiency. PCM was filled inside the TCECs and pasted at the back of the PV. Systems with and without PCM, with and without TCEC and systems with different tilt angles have been investigated. The melting of PCM, rate of thermal energy storage, charging efficiency and enhancement in PV performance are analyzed. The behavior of the systems is analyzed for the climates of Portsmouth, UK and Chennai, India. It is seen that the average charging efficiency of PCM can be increased from 49% to 62% using proposed TCEC. Moreover, the average rate of thermal energy storage can be increased from 249W/m2 of aperture to 302W/m2 and the PV electrical efficiency can be increased from 17.6% to 19.2% using TCEC-PCM. It is also seen that as the inclination of PCM container decreases from 45° to 0°, the charging efficiency decreases by 32%.