The influence of PV coverage ratio on thermal and electrical performance of photovoltaic-Trombe wall

This paper presents a novel photovoltaic-Trombe wall (PV-TW). Based on the actual measured weather data in Hefei, a detailed simulation model for PV-TW is presented. The simulation results show that as the coverage ratio increases, the electrical yield and the total efficiency of PV-TW increases, but the indoor temperature and the thermal efficiency of PV-TW decreases. The maximum indoor air temperature difference, corresponding to the lowest and the highest coverage ratio, can reach to 6.8 °C above. In addition, as the coverage ratio increases, the electrical efficiency of photovoltaic cell decreases, but the influence of coverage ratio on electrical efficiency is slight, less than 0.5%.