Performance monitoring and cost competitiveness study for Photovoltaic Thermal Hybrid (PVT) technology in India
Student name: Mr Aviral Yadav
Guide: Dr Jami Hossain
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Mr Abhinav Goyal
Abstract: Photovoltaic Thermal (PVT) collector is a micro-cogeneration device for integration of solar photovoltaic panel and a solar thermal collector. The normal PV panel electrical efficiency decreases as the cell temperature rises. The heat exchanger on the back of PV module allows a greater fraction of the incident energy to be turned into useful thermal and electrical energy. The water flowing in the PVT panels would extract the heat, bringing down the module temperature. In addition, water heating and electrical energy can be produced with more efficient use of roof space. The study is aimed at conducting monitoring and performance evaluation analysis on the installed projects. The performance will be evaluated first by simulation, followed by monitoring of a demonstration project site at NISE, Gurgaon. Thereafter, economic analysis will be performed for a comparison with conventional photovoltaic system (PV) and Solar water heating system (SWHS) with the same total collector area of 100 m2. The system boundary was at collector and all the generated energy was assumed to be utilized. Cost competitiveness is analysed on the basis of performance results, energy prices and conventional PV and SWHS collector prices. The electrical and thermal efficiency of PVT under study was found out to be 17% and 24% respectively. The cost at which PVT will be a competitive technology is about Rs.1,40,000 /kWp. Results indicated that PVT system is cost competitive to PV but not with SWHS due to low cost of SWHS. Thus, this technology is best suited for applications where both heat and electricity is required and roof area is a constraint.
Keywords: PVT, Photovoltaics, SWHS, Performance modelling, Financial modelling, Cost competitiveness
