Solar Distillation and Water Heating Systems Integration with Photovoltaic Technology

Solar energy is a renewable source with three major applications: photovoltaics (PV), thermal, and daylight. A photovoltaic cell has a conversion efficiency of around 16–35%, depending upon its fabrication technology. Hence, it is observed that ~65–84% of incident solar radiation is lost as thermal energy to the surroundings. At the same time, solar thermal has vast applications, e.g., solar water heating, solar greenhouse drying, solar greenhouse crop cultivation, solar distillation, solar aquaculture, etc. Solar thermal applications have a thermal efficiency of around 20–45% depending upon fabrication materials, design, operating, and weather conditions. Integrating photovoltaic and thermal applications proved advantageous over their application with better overall efficiency. Over the years, many researchers have developed various concepts integrating these technologies to get more output, cost, and land use benefits. This chapter elaborates on different ‘PV-integrated solar distillation systems’ and ‘PV-integrated solar water heating systems’ with working principles and performances.