Enhancing a solar panel cooling system using an air heat sink with different fin configurations

摘要

The temperature of a solar panel is an important parameter, which influences its performance and efficiency. Thus, development of solar panel cooling systems represents a new face of technology that may be used to improve power generation. Here, the reduction of solar panel temperature using an air-cooled heat sinks is studied numerically. The design of the heat sink comprises rectangular fins and rectangular fins with holes, made from a material with high thermal conductivity. The cooling efficiency is studied for different configurations of the heat sink, which are obtained by changing the fin numbers and hole distances. The numerical model is realized, using ANSYS-Fluent software, for a steady state whereby the ambient temperature is 25-35 °C, for different heat flux values. Increasing the number of fins and holes decreases the panel temperature. The reduction of panel temperature with fins is 50% compared to solar panels without fins.