(36a) The Effect of Heat and Thermal Storage Capacities of Photovoltaic Duct Wall on Co-Generation of Electric and Thermal Power

A study has been conducted to consider the effect of heat storage capacity and thermal storage capacity of photovoltaic (PV) duct wall on co-generation of electric and thermal power. The duct wall was built with a pair of glass coated PV modules installed on a wooden frame of a duct wall, leaving air passage with the wall section of plywood board filled with polystyrene. The outdoor room with a duct wall was setup at Concordia University, Montréal, Canada for collection of measurements of solar intensities, currents, voltages, air velocities and temperatures of air and composite surfaces. The exhaust fan installed in an outdoor room was used for increasing the air velocities in the test section. A thermal network model is proposed to predict the temperature distribution in the PV duct wall. The steady state solution of one dimensional heat conduction and heat transport equations were obtained by performing two dimensional energy and mass balances on section of PV duct wall. The heat and thermal storage capacities of PV duct wall were obtained for comparing the errors and validating the assumptions made in the proposed model. It was envisaged that assumptions were valid because of negligible computational errors due to steady state solution. The study has concluded that for PV duct wall, two dimensional transient solution of heat conduction equation is not essential for considering the effect of heat and thermal storage capacities. The model has predicted fairly well the temperatures along the height of PV duct wall in comparison to the measurements obtained from the test section. The obtained results have been used to estimate co-generation of electric and thermal power.