Experimental study and numerical simulations of the airflow around a photovoltaic panel on a building roof
Résumé
The thermal balance of a photovoltaic panel under real conditions depends on many interactions between the panel itself and its environment: intermittent solar radiation and possible shading, wind fluctuations and local airflow disturbances, and thermal transfers between the back side of the panel and the surface of the support. In urban environments, the presence of many obstacles leads to turbulent flows and large fluctuations in air velocity can be observed. Careful consideration should therefore be given to evaluate the convective exchanges in the heat balance of a photovoltaic panel.
The presented work is based on both experimental and modeling approaches and aims to understand the main parameters that are involved in convective fluxes on a PV panel surfaces. For the experimental part, airflow measurements were conducted on an instrumented platform at Nancy, France. These acquisitions were carried out on a photovoltaic panel placed on an extensive green roof during the summer of 2021 and from May to September 2022. The sensors are highly sensitive temperature probes and those are recording local airflow with high frequency to capture turbulent effects. These measurements provide information on the typical configurations encountered on our experimental platforms and validate the numerical simulations of a fluid mechanics model. The numerical simulations provide information to identify the most influential parameters on the airflow and heat transfers from the panel. The simulations are then compared with the measurements from the airflow sensors.
The convective heat transfer coefficient is also deduced from the numerical simulations and the experimental work, and then compared to correlations from literature.
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