Performance of new hybrid heat sink with trimmed fins and microchannels for thermal control of a triple-junction concentrator photovoltaic cell

An efficient and low-cost cooling method for high concentrator photovoltaic systems is essential to improve the overall performance and prolong their lifetime. Therefore, a new cost-effective hybrid heat sink with trimmed fins and microchannels was developed to harvest the benefits of active and passive cooling techniques. Unlike the traditional heat sink designs, adopting trimmed fins saves the heat sink weight and cost without affecting its cooling performance. Thus, three different heat sink configurations, including (A) heat sink with trimmed fins, (B) microchannel heat sink, and (C) hybrid heat sink with trimmed fins and microchannels, were compared. A comprehensive three-dimensional model for the proposed heat sink designs coupled with the triple-junction cell was numerically simulated and solved using ANSYS FLUENT software to predict the cell temperature distribution, temperature uniformity, electrical efficiency, and net output power. Compared to the other trimming angles, the fin trimming angle (α) achieves a 20 % reduction in the heat sink weight and cost with no noticeable effect on its cooling performance. The new hybrid heat sink efficiently controls the cell temperature below 110 ˚C up to a high concentration ratio of 3600 suns, compared to 1220 suns and 3010 suns for configurations A and B, respectively. Furthermore, using the hybrid heat sink improves the electrical efficiency by 3 % and 3.2 % compared to configurations A and B, respectively. Generally, the hybrid heat sink achieves the maximum generated power of 123.7 W compared to 41.9 W and 103.4 W for configurations A and B, respectively.