1. Sri Adichunchanagiri Shikshana Trust (R)
SJB Institute of Technology
(Affiliated to Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi& Approved by AICTE, New Delhi.)
Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering
“EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT OF PHOTOVOLTAIC PANELS
BY DESIGN IMPROVEMENT OF COOLING SYSTEM USING
WATER COOLING TECHNIQUE”
Renewable and Innovative Technology
By : Batch 12
Bhavya S - 1JB18EE004
Pratika A Nayak - 1JB18EE019
Shivani G - 1JB18EE028
Sonal S U - 1JB18EE029
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2. INTRODUCTION
• One of the major renewable sources of energy is the solar energy. In photovoltaic solar technology a panel consisting of
many solar cells is used.
• The photovoltaic process converts sunlight – the most abundant energy source on the planet, directly into electricity. The
sun emits photons (light), which generate electricity when they strike a photovoltaic cell. So in the same way a photovoltaic
cell, made from a semi-conducting material, is a device that converts light into electricity
• Some of these techniques are based on increasing the incoming radiation on the PV cells surface to reduce the PV panel
area, which can be achieved by using solar concentrators, lenses, and/or using solar tracking.
• The PV module will give the non-linear power characteristics when there is problem in manufacturing times and also when
the solar panel reached maximum operating temperature.
• The objective is to improve the efficiency of solar panels by using water cooling tubes this also leads to decrease the heat
on solar panels and also keeping the solar panels clean.
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4. OBJECTIVES
• The objective is to improve photovoltaic (PV) efficiency by maintaining it below maximum allowable
temperature(25degree Celsius).
• Accordingly, the excess heat must be dissipated efficiently in order to avoid excessive high temperatures,
which have an adverse effect on the electrical performance of the cell.
• To remove the dust particles regularly using the wipers manually.
• The solar charge controller is used to store the charge and to avoid overcharging of the battery.
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5. MOTIVATION
• Currently, the world is dealing with various problems of energy shortage. At present ,maximum energy is
generated using coal but the cost of coal, natural gas or other fossils fuels are high and by-products after
generation gives harmful effects on environment and human life.
• In renewable energy sources solar energy is major and easily available source on the earth.
• Heat increases operating temperature of PV system. The efficiency of solar cell decreases as the temperature
of solar panel increases above operating temperature.
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8. Circuit diagram for wipers Circuit diagram for solar charge controller
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9. WORKING
• The block diagram shows how to connect the components. Here, microcontroller works with the supply
voltage of +5V. When the solar panel gets charged, the voltage is generated and it is passed to the voltage
circuit.
• Since the voltage circuit is connected to the microcontroller having LCD to see how much voltage is received
from solar. Here boost circuit is to boost or stabilize the voltage and passes it to the storage battery.
• When the temperature sensor senses the high temperature, the microcontroller sends the signal to the relay to
pump the water behind the solar panels.
• We can see the voltage received from the solar panel and also we can see the power in the battery which is
shown in the LCD display. The water from Tank 1 is passed to solar panel to reduce the temperature of
system.
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10. • The warm water is sent to Tank 2 and that water is passed to tank 1 in a zig-zag manner which reduces the water
temperature. The L293D IC receiver signals from microcontroller and transmits the signal to the motor. From motor,
voltage is passed to solar panel and the working repeats.
• The solar charge controller will prevent the overcharging of the battery and will be use full for increasing the
lifespan of the battery.
• It will also help prevent electricity from flowing from the batteries to the solar panels at night.
• It is prove to be useful in blocking the reverse current flow which otherwise may lead to discharge of the batteries at
night.
• The stored charge is used to charge phone etc.
• The wipers are used to clean the dust particles at regular interval manually.
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11. COMPONENTS
The following are components used and their specifications :
• Arduino / PIC Microcontroller
• Buzzer
• LCD Display – 16 x 2 lines
• DC Motor water pump – 12 V
• DC Motor drive – H bridge
• PVC copper tubes of 6 mm diameter, coiled below the PV panel
• LM35 Temperature sensor
• Cleaning sweep wiper above the PV panel.
• Water container
• Solar charge controller.
• Angular frame for holding PV panel and water tank and pump.
• Battery of 12 Volts.
• Acrylic sheet of suitable size
• Wooden pillar stands
• SMPS
• 12 V DC Relay board.
• Terminals
• Cleaning sweep wiper above PV panel
• PV Module 12V,10W
• BC547 Transistor
• 1K ohm resistor
• Servo Motor
• LED light(load)
• Pipe(size 5mm)
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12. ARDUINO UNO
• Arduino Uno is known as an open-source development board as it allows you to use this board to interact with
real-world things by uploading programs on this board.
• It can also interact with motors, sensors, and electromagnets.
HARDWARE COMPONENTS
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13. • Pinout diagram shows that each pin has multiple functions such as PWM, interrupts, general-purpose input-
output and analog channel.
• But we can use only one function of each pin at a time. It consists of a total of 14 GPIO pins.
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14. • LM35 is an analog temperature sensor.
• Our Arduino Uno has an in built 10 bit ADC. We use of this ADC of Arduino to convert the analog output of
LM35 to digital output.
• Arduino Uno has a 6 channel inbuilt ADC, there are 6 analog input pins numbered from A0 to A5.
• Connect analog out of LM35 to any of these analog input pins of Arduino.
TEMPERATURE SENSOR
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15. • Relays are most commonly used switching device in electronics.
• There are two important parameters of relay, first is the Trigger Voltage, this is the voltage required to turn on
the relay that is to change the contact from Common → NC to Common → NO.
• The other parameter is your Load Voltage & Current, this is the amount of voltage or current that the NC,
NO or Common terminal of the relay could withstand, in our case for DC it is maximum of 30V and 10A.
RELAY
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16. • The term LCD stands for liquid crystal display.
• It is one kind of electronic display module used in an extensive range of applications like various circuits &
devices like any prototype, circuits, mobile phones, calculators, computers, TV sets, etc.
• A 16×2 LCD has two register like data register and command register.
• When register set =1, then the data register will be selected.
LCD DISPLAY
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17. WATER TUBES
• Water tubes are used to make the water flow from water tank to the back of the solar panel.
• Here the water flows through the water tubes.
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18. SOLAR PANEL
• A solar cell panel, solar electric panel, photo-voltaic (PV) module or solar panel is an assembly of
photovoltaic cells mounted in a framework for installation.
• Solar panels use sunlight as a source of energy to generate direct current electricity.
• Arrays of a photovoltaic system supply solar electricity to electrical equipment.
• Silicon is used to create semiconductors for about 95% of all solar panels on the market today, with the
other 5% using experimental and in-development technologies like organic photovoltaic cells.
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19. BC547 TRANSISTOR
BC 547 has three pins in total similar to the other bipolar junction transistors.
All of these three pins i.e. collector, base and emitter along with symbol are shown in the table given below.
BC547 can be used for switching purposes.
We can also use it for the amplification purposes.
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20. R365 PUMP
• This DC 6-12V Pump R365 is use for liquid and air to be moved from one place to another.
• The R365 requires between 6 - 12V DC and between 0.5 - 0.7A and will deliver its maximum operating
values when power is at the upper end of these ranges
• The pump can handle pumping heated liquids up to a temperature of 80 degrees Celsius and when
suitably powered can suck water through the tube from up to 2m and pump water vertically for up to
3m. 20
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21. • A servo motor is a type of motor that can rotate with great precision.
• If you want to rotate an object at some specific angles or distance, then you use a servo motor.
• If motor is powered by a DC power supply then it is called DC servo motor, and if it is AC-
powered motor then it is called AC servo motor.
• It consists of three parts:
1 Controlled device
2 Output sensor
3 Feedback system
SERVO MOTOR
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22. The charge controller regulates the amperage and voltage that is delivered to the loads and any excess
power is delivered to the battery system so the batteries maintain their state of charge without getting
overcharged. Solar Charge Controller converts the solar power to deliver the available current for charging
batteries.
SMPS
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23. WATER TANK
It’s used to store the water. The water is pumped from the water tank.
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24. PCB BOARD
• General purpose PCBs, as their name suggests is the generalized from of PCB.
• By generalized we mean that we are free to make any kind of circuit as we wish using this PCB.
• This makes it useful for small scale production of electronic devices and for new ideas before production.
• Like a normal PCB, it provides a means to hold all our components together in one place as a single
unit. But it does not provide the connection between components as provided by a specific purpose PCB
using tracks. 24
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25. BATTERY
• An electric battery is a source of electric power consisting of one or more electrochemical cells with
external connections for powering electrical devices.
• When a battery is supplying power, its positive terminal is the cathode and its negative terminal is
anode.
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26. SOLAR CHARGE CONTROLLER
The charge controller regulates the amperage and voltage that is delivered to the loads and any excess
power is delivered to the battery system so the batteries maintain their state of charge without getting
overcharged. Solar Charge Controller converts the solar power to deliver the available current for charging
batteries.
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28. WIPERS
By cleaning the panels using this system daily or weekly, depending upon the rate of dust accumulation,
the power loss due to dust can be controlled.
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29. PWM SPEED REGULATOR
The DC Motor PWM Speed Regulator 1.8V, 3V, 5V, 6V, 12V-2A speed control switch function for DC Motor
allows controlling the direction of a DC motor using a Pulse-Width-Modulated (PWM) DC voltage with a Duty
Cycle fully adjustable from 0%-100%.
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30. L293D MOTOR DRIVER
• The L293D IC receives signals from the microprocessor and transmits the relative signal to the motors.
• It has two voltage pins, one of which is used to draw current for the working of the L293D and the
other is used to apply voltage to motors
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31. SOFTWARE
ARDUINO IDE
• The Arduino Integrated Development Environment is a cross-platform application (for Windows, macOS, Linux)
that is written in functions from C and C++.
• It is used to write and upload programs to Arduino compatible boards, but also, with the help of third-party cores,
other vendor development boards. 31
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32. MATLAB AND SIMULINK – MPPT
• Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) is an algorithm implemented in photovoltaic (PV) inverters to continuously
adjust the impedance seen by the solar array to keep the PV system operating at, or close to, the peak power point of the
PV panel under varying conditions, like changing solar irradiance, temperature, and load.
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36. RESULTS
• The above figure shows that the temperature is below 35 degree Celsius and so the LED is in OFF condition and
there is no flow of water through the water pipe from the water tank to the back of the solar panel and hence no
cooling .
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37. • The above figure shows that the temperature is above 35 degree Celsius and so the LED is in ON condition
and there is flow of water through the water pipe from the water tank to the back of the solar panel and
hence cooling action takes place .
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38. SIMULATION
• DC-DC converters are used in many types industrial applications.
• They are used to change the DC source voltage level to higher or lower level.
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39. CONCLUSION
• Water cooling of solar panels can improve the efficiency, photovoltaic energy conversion and power
production of the panels is increasing by decreasing temperature and operated at its below operating
temperature, this leads
to increase the life cycle of solar panels. The major advantages of this technique are:
• 1) This cooling technique increases cooling efficiency.
• 2) This technique is simple and low cost.
• The dust is removed at regular interval of time by using wipers manually.
• Voltage is collected in charge controller and used for charging the batteries, lightning the load etc.
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40. REFERENCES
• [1]. Mrs. Rupali Nazar review on “Improvement of efficiency of solar panel using different”, International Journal of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers, ISSN-2321-2055 (E)IJEEE,Volume 07,Issue 01, January-June 2015
• [2]. Mr. Sayaran A. Abdulgafer et al. review article on “Improving the efficiency of polycrystalline solar panel by water
emersion method” International Journal for innovative research in science, ISSN 2319-8753, Volume 3, Issue 01, January -
2014
• [3]. Mr. B.Balamuralikrishnan et al. review article on “Efficiency enhancement of photovoltaic cell” International Journal
of Electrical Electronics Instrumentation Engineering ISSN 2320-3765 , Volume 03, Issue 04, May-2014
• [4]. Mr. Saurabh Mehrotra et al. review article on “Performance of a solar panel with water immersion cooling technique”
International Journal of Science, Environment ISSN 2278-3687 (O), Volume 3, No 3, 2014, 1161 – 117
• [5]. Dubey S, Tiwari GN. “Thermal modeling of a combined system of photovoltaic thermal (PV/T) solar water heater. Sol
Energy “2008; 82:602–12.
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