Revolutionizing solar photovoltaic efficiency: A comprehensive review of cutting-edge thermal management methods for advanced and conventional solar photovoltaic

Abstract

Studies have been conducted to explore innovative performance-enhancing thermal management strategies (PETS) aimed at improving the efficiency of Photovoltaic (PV) technology and shift towards a low-carbon economy. Nonetheless, there remains a research gap concerning PETS for PV and PV/T systems because there are still unanswered concerns in the literature. These gaps include specific details about what PETS technology entails in terms of cooling, and the reasons behind the non-commercialization of certain PETS technologies by evaluating the pros and cons of each method. Furthermore, it is not been stated previously whether research on device-based PETS is feasible for conventional PV technology or whether rendering PV material like Perovskite is the future. This study not only tackles these important issues regarding PETS systems, but also extracts statistical and qualitative data from recent literature for each PETS method, showing the potential of each technology with respect to influencing factors like scale, system sizes, location, type of PV cell, and environmental factors. Based on the analysis, integrating PETS techniques has the potential to improve solar PV efficiency by a range of 1% to 50%, coinciding with a surface temperature decrease of 1.8 °C to 50 °C in PV panels. Strategies that work well include spectrum filtering, radiative cooling, jet impingement, and rendering Perovskite materials. For future research, several key areas have been highlighted for new researchers, such as evaluating the long-term viability of each PETS method rather than focusing solely on short-term performance metrics. This includes conducting 4E (Energy, Exergy, Environmental, and Economic) analyses under variable experimental conditions throughout the year, which can provide insights critical for advancing the commercialization of PETS methods.