Parked Electric Vehicle's Cabin Temperature Management Using Photovoltaic Powered Ventilation

This paper presents how the electric vehicle roof integrated photovoltaic (PV) powered ventilation can be used for controlling the climate of the car. In this work, a fully-functional Renault Zoe electric car has been used to conduct experiments for PV powered ventilation. These experiments have been part of a wider research project of testing electric vehicles of the Edinburgh Napier University's Transport Research Institute. The present work illustrates performance evaluation of electric car ventilation, when roof-mounted PV modules were used to operate DC powered fans for ventilation. It was found that the motor-fan selection for removing the warm air from cabin space is of important (i.e. motor-fan operating points have to be near to the maximum power points of PV modules under varying solar radiation). In this article, experimental results are presented and analysed.