Photovoltaic-thermal collectors for night radiative cooling and solar heating: Numerical study

The radiative cooling is a natural phenomenon, which allows rejecting the heat energy stocked by earthly objects by radiation outward, through the atmosphere-window (8-13 mu m). In this work, a combination of the solar heating and the radiative cooling technologies by using a photovoltaic-thermal collector (PVT) has been investigated. A numerical modeling was evaluated by using the TRNSYS16 simulation software. The thermal performances of the collector were investigated under two climates and for different water flow rates. The monthly performances of two Moroccans cities were also conducted. The numerical results obtained show that the variation of the panel temperature in comparison with that of air allows to estimate cooling powers between 50 and 70 W/m(2) during the night. Likewise, the daily variation allows exploiting heating powers between 100 and 250 W/m(2). The results also indicate that the combination of radiative cooling and solar heating technologies by using (PVT) save the energy for air conditioning and heating in the both Moroccans cities (Marrakech and Ouarzazate). (c) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Renewable Energy and Applications.