What will it Take to Make Solar Panels Cool?

Traditional photovoltaic cells use semi-conductive silicon to drive their light to electricity conversion process. Although this has become a cheap process to mass produce, there are drawbacks that keep these panels from reaching their maximum efficiency. Due to properties of the semi-conductive silicon most panels have a dependence on temperature around 0.5% maximum power output loss per 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature. By keeping a solar panel at room temperature, the power output on a hot summer day can be improved by 10-15%. It has been found that by applying water to the upwards facing surface to intermittently cool the panel, the power output can be improved by up to 8%. The possibility of reusing rainwater to drive this cooling has been explored. Using MATLAB the evaporation rate and longevity of rainwater reserves has been estimated to investigate the feasibility of such a system. Using these results a design has been created that would reuse rainwater to cool the solar canopies existing in three UMass parking lots.