From the point of view: the diversification of photovoltaic(PV) installation site, installing PV systems on water bodies like lake, reservoir, canal and salt farm has attracted a great deal of attention owing to gaining more... [ view full abstract ]
From the point of view: the diversification of photovoltaic(PV) installation site, installing PV systems on water bodies like lake, reservoir, canal and salt farm has attracted a great deal of attention owing to gaining more electricity originated from the cooling effects by the water body. The concept of solar PV systems installed beneath salt farm is proposed for the first time in the world.
A salt farm adopting a solar evaporation method in Korea conventionally consists of two ponds, evaporation pond for increasing salinity and crystallization pond for harvesting salt. Water proof solar PV modules are installed in the beneath of shallow pond (2~15cm, depth), that is evaporation pond. The front part of modules is only submerged in the water, but the rear part of modules where a junction box is placed is not submerged. The gaps between modules are sealed with specially designed parts to prevent the leakage of sea waters.
The most merit of this system is able to harvest both salt and electricity at a same site and same time. The power generation would be decreased due to the installation angle, zero degree and the weakened solar incident intensity by sea water reflection. However, it is believed that the loss of power generation can be overcome partially by the cooling effect of sea water. We named this system 「Salt Farm Underwater Photovoltaic Systems」.
In this study, feasibility tests were conducted to confirm sea water effects on the performance of PV module. To do this, we fabricated water tanks where a single cell module of ~5W is installed at the bottom. The performance of module was examined by an AM 1.5 solar simulator with various temperature (20 ~ 60℃) and depth (0 ~ 10 cm) of water. The effects of temperature and depth of water on the performance of PV module were confirmed. In additionally, the properties of single- and multi- crystalline silicon solar cell were comparison.
