The Experimental Performance of an Unglazed PV-thermal Collector with a Fully Wetted Absorber

In general, there are two types of PVT collector, glazed and unglazed, depending on the existence of glass in front of the PV module. On the other hand, water-type PVT collectors can be classified into two types according to absorber type: the sheet-and-tube absorber PVT collector and the fully wetted absorber PVT collector.The aim of this study is to analyze the electrical and thermal performance of a water-type PVT collector with a fully wetted absorber. For this study, a prototype of an unglazed PVT collector with a fully wetted absorber was designed and built, and both the thermal and electrical performances of the prototype PVT collector were measured in outdoor conditions. A conventional mono-crystalline Si PV module was tested alongside the PVT collector in order to compare their electrical performance