BAPV arrays: Side-by-side comparison with and without fan cooling

The hot stagnant air underneath the BAPV (building applied photovoltaics) arrays can be extracted to improve the array lifetime, performance and thermal uniformity, and can also be used for residential space heating and water heating. This work is an effort to compare and understand the effect of fan cooling on the temperature of rooftop photovoltaic modules by comparing two side-by-side arrays (control array without fan cooling and test array with fan cooling) under identical ambient conditions of irradiance, air temperature, wind speed and wind direction. This work investigates the effect of fan cooling on the performance, thermal uniformity under low/high wind speed conditions and the thermal models previously developed at Arizona State University.