Authors

1 Alhussein University College. & Ministry of electricity- Training and Energy Research Office.

2 Mustansiriyah University, College of Education, Physics Department.

3 Ministry of education, Iraq

Abstract

Any work to improve the performance of the solar modules could add to their economic competitiveness against fossil fuels. In the present work the performance of PV solar module was improved by using V-Trough concentrator system (CPV) which moved by two axis tracking system. The concentrator consists of two flat reflectors of area 2 m2 for each one with geometric concentration ratio of 2X. To optimize the performance of the V-Trough CPV systems, two types of reflector material, Aluminum and mirror (glass coated by silver nitrate) were used. The results indicated that the temperature of PV reference module was higher than the ambient temperature by 27oC but there is too small difference in temperature between the tracking PV module with the reference which ranged to 2oC, while the temperature of the CPV system was higher than reference by 37oC. The temperature of the PV module under mirror reflectors was lower than module combined with Aluminum reflectors by 3oC. As a result of arising of the temperature of CPV system in compare with PV reference module, the open circuit voltage was droop by 0.7 V, 0.5 V for PV module under mirror and Aluminum reflectors respectively. The reflectors increased the short circuit current values by 2.1 A, 2.6 A for PV module combined with mirror and Aluminum reflectors respectively. Accordingly the performance (as an average daily gain of output power) of the PV solar module was improved by using V-Trough CPV system, 44%, 34% by using Aluminum and mirror reflectors respectively.

Keywords