Simulation and experimental comparison of photovoltaic thermal technology with rectangular channels

• Rising temperatures lower PV efficiency making hybrid photovoltaic/thermal (PVT) systems ideal for harnessing both electricity and heat. • This study simulates and tests a water-based rectangular channels PVT system, confirming strong agreement between lab and model results. • Advanced metrics energy, exergy, sustainability index, and more reveal the system’s performance with impressive simulation accuracy. Increasing the temperature of photovoltaic (PV) devices can reduce their efficiency, making photovoltaic-thermal(PVT) technology a suitable choice for providing thermal energy. This study compares a PVT system with a water-based rectangular channel model through simulations and experiments. The results of indoor experiments validate the simulation outcomes, utilizing the same intensity and flow rate variations. The water flow rate variations range from 7.2 L/h to 32.4 L/h, divided into five steps. The study was conducted with three intensity variations: 500 W/m², 700 W/m², and 900 W/m². A comprehensive comparative analysis approach, incorporating energy analysis, exergy, sustainability index (SI), improvement potential (IP), exergetic ecological index (EcEI), and waste exergy ratio (WER), has been conducted. The comparison results indicate that the overall PVT efficiency accuracy reaches 88.79%. In terms of exergy efficiency, the accuracy is 94.39%. The accuracy of the SI is 98.95%, the accuracy of the IP is 97.71%, the accuracy of the WER is 98.84%, and the accuracy of the EcEI is 97.73%. All accuracy metrics between the simulation results and indoor PVT experiments with rectangular channels exhibit high accuracy.