Temperature optimization of high concentrated active cooled solar cells

Active cooling is essential for solar cells operating under high optical concentration ratios. A system comprises four solar cells that are in thermal contact on top of a copper tube is proposed. Water is flowing inside the tube in order to reduce solar cells temperature for increasing their performance. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of such system has been performed in order to investigate the effect of water flow rate, tube internal diameter, and convective heat transfer coefficient on the temperature of the solar cells. It is found that increasing convective heat transfer coefficient has a significant effect on reducing solar cells temperatures operating at low flow rates and high optical concentration ratios. Also, a further increase of water flow rate has no effect on reducing cells temperatures.