Optimization and practical verification of system configuration parameter design for a photovoltaic thermal system combined with a reflector

Abstract

This study designed and optimized the system parameters for a photovoltaic thermal system (PV/thermal system) combined with reflectors. Moreover, it discussed the gain of electrical efficiency and thermal efficiency on the system after adding two reflectors on each of the south and north sides, and adjusting the water circulation system. As the rising angle and position of the sun varies each season, in order to make this study more rigorous, experiments were conducted in four seasons of a year. The Taguchi orthogonal array was used for experimental planning, and the optimal parameters were analyzed for electrical efficiency and thermal efficiency. The analysis of variance was conducted to examine the influential parameters, and principal component analysis was used to calculate the principal component point of each experiment. The results were employed to construct a response surface methodology model. Finally, the steepest descent method was applied to obtain the optimal parameters. The reflector theory was applied to calculate the gain of solar radiation amount after installing the reflector. Moreover, the gain was inputted into the simulation software TRNSYS to simulate the electrical power output and the water temperature in the water storage tank. The confirmatory experiments of the four seasons found that the electrical energy after installing the reflector increased by 0.117-0.183 kWh, and the thermal energy increased by 1.7-2.6 . The experiment confirmed that the prediction error was < 4 %.