Electrical and Thermal Performance Optimization of Photovoltaic/Thermal System Using Multi-Objective Jaya Algorithm

Photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) collectors, as an emerging solar technology, can generate both electrical and thermal energy, presenting promising application prospects. This study focuses on optimizing the efficiency of the PV/T system by the use of MATLAB/Simulink software environment. Building on a validated PV/T system model, an optimization framework is established by coupling a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm and Simulink. By selecting tank volume and mass flow rate as the design variables for optimization, the Pareto front for electrical and thermal efficiencies is obtained to achieve optimal system design. A multi-objective Jaya algorithm (MO-Jaya) is developed to perform iterative optimization efficiently. As a multi-objective version of the basic Jaya algorithm, MO-Jaya utilizes the technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution to tell apart the individuals with the best and worst performance, and introduces the Lévy flights mechanism to modify the basic formula of Jaya, thus balancing exploration and exploitation. Comparison experiments with commonly used multi-objective evolutionary algorithms and state-of-the-art methods indicate that MO-Jaya can obtain a set of high-quality Pareto nondominated solutions, which demonstrate strong competitiveness in terms of quality metric and inversed generation distance, thus benefiting the performance improvement of PV/T systems.