Water cooling solar panels

[rw-]

2 water cooled 250W panels.  Our borehole water is clean so no calcium deposits,

[rw-]

[rw-]

About 30 or 40W increase in power

[rw-]

[rw-]

I get 429W at 9:30 am up from 395 before cooling with water.

[DeepBass9]

Next you must think of a way to preheat the water going into your geyser with that method........

Edited October 4, 2019 by DeepBass9

[Jaco De Jongh]

14 hours ago, rw- said:

I get 429W at 9:30 am up from 395 before cooling with water.

May I ask how you get the water up there? 

 

[___]

19 minutes ago, Jaco de Jongh said:

May I ask how you get the water up there? 

Good question. It's a net loss if you need more than 40W to get the water up there

I still think the most efficient off the shelf thing you can do right now is a heat pump with a collector under the PV modules. I saw one for sale some months ago. If you're going to hwat water anyway (and most households do), take the heat from a place where you don't want it

 

[Jaco De Jongh]

1 hour ago, plonkster said:

Good question. It's a net loss if you need more than 40W to get the water up there

And even if its gravity feed out of a tank, you will most probably need more energy to get the required amount of water to cool the panels into the tank than what you will score out of cooling the panels. Even the cost of using municipal water to do so, might be more expensive than the wattage you score. 

I was thinking in these lines a few years back when i started with solar, but could never make the maths look good, so I dropped the idea.