Comparative study of double-pass flat and compound parabolic concentrated photovoltaic-thermal systems with and without fins

This paper presents a comparative study between compound parabolic concentrated (CPC) and conventional flat hybrid double-pass photovoltaic-thermal (PVT) systems. A mathematical thermal-electrical model is developed and verified with published experimental data. The use of detailed five-parameter electrical modeling in the analysis made it possible to estimate the electrical parameters of PV cells, such as voltage and current. A parametric study is conducted to investigate the effect of different design and operation variables such as length, packing factor, duct depth and flow rate on thermal and electrical performance. Furthermore, the study investigated the performance of proposed systems with fins attachment and the effect of their material and type on performance. The model is applied to simulate and analyze thermal and electrical performance of finned (F) and un-finned (UF) flat and CPC photovoltaic systems for a selected case at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The results show that annual thermal gain is 1% higher for flat-PVT (F) compared to flat-PVT (UF). On the other hand, the annual electrical gain for flat-PVT (F) is 3% higher than flat-PVT (UF). The CPC-PVT (F) is estimated to have more than 3% thermal and 8% electrical gain compared to CPC-PVT (UF). Among studied four configurations, CPC-PVT (F) system will have the best performance.