Performance enhancement of Floating Photovoltaic (FPV) Solar panels via submerged extended surfaces

• Effective cooling of Floating Solar Panels using water-submerged extended surfaces. • Increase in extended surfaces reduces PV module heat and boosts power gain. • Floating PV output increased in hot regions due to cooling. • LCOE reduces due to cooling at large plant capacity. • Average Power gain of 2.23 Wp (FPV) and 2.58 Wp (Land PV) with extended surfaces. Increase in temperature due to Climate change reduces the efficiency of Solar Photovoltaic systems. Stress on energy sector is increasing in meeting growing demand across the world. Several passive cooling strategies have been developed to mitigate thermal losses for solar photovoltaic panels. They contribute to uniform temperature distribution enhancing overall system performance. This study introduces a passive cooling approach for Floating Solar PV modules using water submerged extended surfaces installed at the back of module, through experimentation and simulation work. The extended surfaces enhance conductive heat transfer to water body helping to increase the overall heat transfer coefficient to reject excess heat to the surroundings. This will reduce the system temperature and improve electrical performance. It also investigates the techno-economic feasibility of adding water submerged aluminium extended surfaces at back of a FPV module in varying depth to enhance its performance in Cyprus. A comparative study is performed with similar PV module installed on land with and without extended surfaces. The proposed cooling approach is suitable for hot ambient temperature regions including Southern Europe, Middle East and Africa where ambient temperature is typically above optimum operational temperature range of PV modules. Results show extended surfaces drop average module temperature by 2.44 ℃ and 4.01 ℃ for FPV and land installed module, increasing average power gain by 2.23 W p and 2.58 W p respectively. LCOE for 1 MW p FPV and land installation is $0.082/kWh and $0.068/kWh and equals to $0.036/kWh for both from 500 MW p plant scale.