Photovoltaic Module Cell Temperature Measurements using Linear Interpolation Technique

This paper presents a photovoltaic module cell temperature measurement and 81 points heat distribution mapping technique using only 9 temperature sensors. The operating principle, mapping technique, experiment setup and performance analysis of the proposed measurement system is discussed. The proposed measurement system consists of 9 negative temperature coefficient thermistor based temperature sensors attached at the back of photovoltaic panel equally spaced in 3 by 3 manner, a microcontroller, a data acquisition and visualization software with interpolation technique developed in MATLAB. The proposed temperature measurement system is verified using FLUKE infrared thermometer at every single point of measurement. The results show an average error of 1 degrees C and the error tend to decrease as the solar irradiance received from the panel increases. The proposed measurement system contributes to the visualization of 9 by 9 heat distribution across a given panel for thermal flow analysis in PV/T cooling design studies.