Supplemental material for the Research paper titled "Effective thermal management of photovoltaic modules equipped with innovative concentrating techniques"

While conventional photovoltaic (PV) technology holds a strong position in the market, there is growing apprehension about energy density owing to the increasing demand for compact system designs. Accordingly, researchers have proposed multiple concentrators and appropriate thermal-management techniques. However, the cooling mode, tracking requirement, and electrical and thermal output quality are the criteria to be satisfied when proposing such designs. Given this, after extensive outdoor tests, two designs are proposed: compound parabolic collector (CPC) based PV (PV-CPC) and Fresnel lens-based PV (PV-FNL). Since the concentration ratio of the CPC was low, a gravity-assisted evaporative cooling system was integrated into the customized PV-CPC, which led to a power output improvement ranging from 13.1 % to 26.1 % compared to the reference model. An additional feature of this method is the minimum tracking. Further, owing to both electrical and thermal outputs, the PV-FNL model is suggested, which bi-focuses the concentrated irradiance over the PV module and thermal receiver. An effective forced cooling (water circulation: once through) could manage the module temperature and harness the heat source. Significant improvement in module power output (46 % to 59 %) followed by useful heat gain (500 W with water exit temperature as ≈ 95 ℃) upholds the efficacy of the proposed system.