Comparison and evaluation of solar photovoltaic thermal system with hybrid collector: An experimental study

In this paper, the evaluation and comparison of a newly designed PV/T hybrid collector with three PV/T systems and conventional PV in term of electrical and thermal performance is presented. The problem statement that drives this study is the nonhomogeneous distribution of heat on the PV module and in the collector, which produces a hot spot and reduce system efficiency. The proposed hybrid (oscillatory/direct flow), Web, direct and oscillatory PV/T collectors were designed and installed with a conventional PV in Oman. The outdoor experimental investigation was conducted at a mass flow rate of 0.020 kg/s. The proposed system improved the voltage and generated power by 28.5%, and 19.4%, respectively. Also, it was found that the hybrid PV/T has 9.11%, 9.98%, and 15.28% higher efficiency than oscillatory, direct and web PV/T's, respectively. On the other hand, the highest thermal efficiency was found to be 60.7% approached by the hybrid system while the highest is 53.3%, 37.0% and 18.7% for the oscillatory, direct and web collectors, respectively. Evaluation and comparison with literature results confirm that the proposed hybrid system provides a significant improvement and suitable for Oman and nearby countries with similar weather conditions.