Design and thermal analysis of a water-cooled DSC module

Elevated working temperatures reduce the efficiency of dye-sensitized solar cells(DSCs), and effective temperature regulation protects them from the undesirable efficiency loss. In this work, a semi-transparent DSC module equipped with a cooling system was designed and constructed for application in buildings, the temperature and output performance of the modules with or without cooling treatment were investigated. The test results showed the cooling system could noticeably improve the power generation and reduce the module temperature. Moreover, we established a mathematical model to analyze the modules’ thermal performances, and introduced the concept of cooling efficiency to evaluate the cooling effect. The model accuracy have been validated utilizing measured data, and the effects of channel depth and mass flow rate on the module temperature and cooling efficiency were further theoretically studied. The combined DSC module has been found to have a good application prospect in building integrated photovoltaic(BIPV), and the numerical results are important in system design.