Experimental study on the electrical performance of a solar photovoltaic panel by water immersion

The decreased efficiency of a photovoltaic panel due to temperature rise during high solar radiation is one of the major drawbacks. The efficiency drop is due to hotness, which restricts the conversion of incident sun rays into electricity by the silicon cells. Thus, a photovoltaic panel has a negative temperature coefficient that increases the current but drops the voltage potential. In this work, water immersion cooling of the photovoltaic panel is studied to improve panel performance. The module is studied with and without water immersion in a tank made up of acrylic material. The photovoltaic (PV) efficiency is determined at different depths of water immersion (10 to 40 mm) inside the acrylic tank. The solar radiation and thermal and electrical parameters of PV are observed at an interval of 60 min, and besides, the solar radiation is also measured. The electrical efficiency without immersion is about 14.24% at solar radiation of about 725 W/m². The photovoltaic panel was observed at a temperature of around 30 °C during the water immersion. The panel efficiency with an immersion depth of 10, 20, 30, and 40 mm is approximately 15.02%, 15.54%, 14.58%, and 13.95%, respectively. The results show that the immersion of PV panels in tap water 20 mm increases the PV efficiency by 9.1% compared to the PV without water immersion. The presented experimental results are beneficial to the solar community to improve the PV performance without external power.