Abstract Photovoltaic (PV) panels can increase their efficiency and durability by using water-cooled systems. In this paper, the authors present a methodology to establish the degradation rate (DR) of PV panels related to their durability and efficiency under cooled versus no-cooled conditions. A long-term feasibility analysis of PV power plants with some suggested modifications are discussed in detail. A standard system was designed to cool down the PV modules. The simulations used with this purpose are based on several publications with relevant aspects carried out in the literature using Matlab-based modeling data. Such results were then confirmed by Homer program to predict the efficiency and durability of PV panels within a lifetime period of 25 years. To illustrate the methodology proposed here, the simulation parameters were used for the city of Santa Maria-RS, Brazil. The results allowed to conclude that cooling combined with heated water for domestic usage can decrease the PV degradation rate by 3% and provide an increased efficiency by almost 30% with respect to the PV panels without such cooling approaches. Therefore, the final results conclude that installation of water-cooled PV panels is an attractive and feasible option for a short- and long-term efficiency improvement with great impact on the expansion and durability of PV power plants.

中文翻译：

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水冷光伏板在效率和耐久性方面的可行性

摘要 光伏 (PV) 面板可以通过使用水冷系统来提高其效率和耐用性。在本文中，作者提出了一种方法来确定与光伏电池板在冷却与非冷却条件下的耐用性和效率相关的退化率 (DR)。详细讨论了光伏电站的长期可行性分析以及一些建议的修改。标准系统旨在冷却光伏组件。用于此目的的模拟基于一些出版物，其中使用基于 Matlab 的建模数据在文献中进行了相关方面的研究。此类结果随后被荷马计划证实，以预测光伏电池板在 25 年的生命周期内的效率和耐用性。为了说明这里提出的方法，模拟参数用于巴西圣玛丽亚-RS 市。结果可以得出结论，与没有这种冷却方法的 PV 电池板相比，冷却与家用热水相结合可以将 PV 降解率降低 3%，并将效率提高近 30%。因此，最终结果得出结论，安装水冷光伏电池板是短期和长期效率提高的一个有吸引力和可行的选择，对光伏电站的扩展和耐久性有很大影响。