  In order to improve performance of photovoltaic/thermal (or PV/T for
simplicity) collectors, this paper firstly validated a previous computational
thermal model and then introduced an improved computational thermal model to
investigate the effects of the major control parameters on the thermal
performance of PV/T collectors, including solar cell temperature, back surface
temperature, and outlet water temperature. Besides, a computational electrical
model of PV/T system was also introduced to elaborate the relationship of
voltage, current and power of a PV module (MSX60 polycrystalline solar cell)
used in an experiment in the literature. Simulation results agree with the
experimental data very well. The effects of the time-steps from 1 hour to
minute, which is closed to the real time, were also reported. At last, several
suggestions to improve the efficiency of PV/T system were illustrated.
