Abstract
Electrical/thermal modeling and simulation of a solar PV panel was made. The effect of face down finned heat sink which is attached to the back surface of panel in lowering the cell temperature and improving the panel electrical efficiency was studied. The performance of a typical PV panel was programed using MATLAB to predict the variation of current and voltage produced by the panel. Thermal modeling of the PV was also made including all modes of heat transfer. To show the effect of the finned heat sink on the cell temperature and PV efficiency both cases with and without heat sink were studied. Convection and radiation heat transfer from the finned heat sink were considered. The simulation results indicate an optimum fin spacing of 12 mm and a fin height of 150 mm for the considered PV 65.2 W solar panel. A decrease in cell temperature of about 25% and an improvement of about 10.8% in efficiency were predicted when attaching geometrically optimized facedown finned heat sink to PV solar panel under an ambient temperature range of 25 degrees C to 50 degrees C, and a solar flux of 1000 W/m(2).