Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Experimental studies have been performed on a small scale PV system including two modules with the same sizes and the same characteristics. Each panel has the size of 0.396 m length, 0.289 m width, 0.023 m thick, and maximum power of 10 W. Coconut oil is used as phase change material in this study for cooling purpose. The coconut oil application is performed in two ways: a. directly used in hollow aluminum bars, b. encapsulated in spherical shape with very small diameter which is called as microencapsulated PCM (MEPCM), and placed inside hollow aluminum bars attached to the back side of the solar panel. Outer dimension of the aluminum bar is 0.26 x 0.011 x 0.011 m. MPPT device is also used to maximize the PV power. The system is tested under direct sunlight at PPEBT lab. The result of the experiment for solar PV cooled by MEPCM shows an increase of 2.65% efficiency above the normal PV, while using MPPT an increase of 14.63% solar PV efficiency than normal PV is obtained. Cooling effect using coconut oil resulted in this research shows an increase of 2.43% of efficiency than the solar PV efficiency cooled by MEPCM. Because of some additional resistances inside the aluminum bar, the effect of MEPCM is limited significantly. Especially, the amount of coconut oil used was still small. However, this study is still showing that the ability of MEPCM and coconut oil in thermal storage purposes.