Experimental Study of the Performance of Two Different Types of Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) Modules under Singapore Climatic Conditions

In this paper, experimental studies on the performance of two different photovoltaic thermal (PVT) modules, under the tropical climatic conditions of Singapore, are evaluated. For this evaluation, two different types (type A and type B) of commercially available PVT modules have been installed and tested at the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore. The type A PVT module comprises mono-crystalline Si solar cells integrated with a tube-and-sheet type thermal collector, while the type B PVT module comprises multi-crystalline Si solar cells integrated with a parallel-plate type thermal collector. The experiments have been performed at different flow rates (0.03 kg/s and 0.06 kg/s) under typical climatic conditions. Validation of the thermal performance of the modules via theoretical analyses is also presented. It has been found that the average thermal efficiency and PV efficiency for the type A PVT module are 40.7% and 11.8%, respectively, and those for the type B PVT module are 39.4% and 11.5%, respectively