Techno-Economic Analysis of a Low-Cost Hybrid Heat Sink-Fan Cooling System for Solar Photovoltaic Panel: Case Study in West Java, Indonesia

Rising temperatures can negatively impact the performance of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. To address this issue, a hybrid passive and active cooling for PV panels presents a viable solution to reduce excessive heating. However, only a few studies have assessed the economic viability of these hybrid PV cooling techniques. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of a low-cost heat sink-fan cooling on the PV panel surface temperature and conversion efficiency, and analyze the production cost effectiveness factor (FCE) to assess the cooling system's performance. A comparative analysis found that the average surface temperature of the PV panel with a cooler was 11.97°C when exposed to solar irradiance of approximately 1,000 W/m2 and 9.73°C lower at around 800 W/m2 compared to the regular PV panel. This reduction in temperature led to an increase in the output voltage, current, and power in the solar PV with the cooler. The addition of heat sink-fan cooling yielded a 0.89 % to 1.02% improvement in the conversion efficiency of the PV module, depending on the intensity of the solar irradiation. The economic analysis based on the production cost effectiveness factor discovered that the mean value of the FCE for the hybrid heat-sink cooler ranged from 1.32 to 1.57. Since the FCE is greater than 1, the current heat sink-fan cooling system is considered cost-ineffective, indicating that further design improvements are necessary.