Involving the Phase Change Materials for Passive Cooling Applications in Photovoltaics: Review

Heat storage is one of the most important energy saving methods. It finds a solution for the applications that consumes a huge amount of energy, especially in cooling. Phase change materials (PCMs) consider the main objects utilized in heat storage purposes, and they also deal with decreasing the pollution effects. Photovoltaic cells suffer from a main issue, which is the temperature rise, and this problem leads to degrade the cell efficiency. Therefore, a system of cooling is required to mitigate the overheating of the componential materials. There are several ways to reach a suitable usage of PCMs in the photovoltaic cells cooling. A lot of solutions depend on utilizing certain types of PCMs with reasonable amount of addition. Common methods serve a suitable thickness of cooling medium, or by using different shapes for the photovoltaic panel. Recent methods implement nanoparticles to enhance the storing heat capacity. This work introduces a review for the solution that the researcher uses to improve the efficiency and power of the panel, and to reduce the temperature of the cell.