LAUSR

The present work investigates the effect of the nanoparticles concentration on the optical and stability performance of a water‐based nanofluid in solar photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) systems experimentally and numerically. A novel nanofluid is formulated with the inclusion of the reduced graphene oxide decorated with silver (rGO‐Ag) nanoparticles in water. Five different concentrations of nanoparticles in the range from 0.0005 to 0.05 wt% is suspended in water to prepare the samples. Optical properties are measured using UV‐Vis. The UV‐Vis absorption analysis reveals that all samples show consistent optical absorption coefficient (α) at higher value (more than 3 cm−1) in the range of 1.5 to 4 eV. The application of optical filtration (OF) using water/rGO‐Ag nanofluid in hybrid PV/T system presented more solar energy absorption through the OF. The hybrid system shows better performance at concentrations less than 0.0235 wt% compared to the PV system without integration with optical filtration. The hybrid solar PV/T system with OF using water/rGO‐Ag nanofluid is able to produce thermal energy with efficiencies between 24% and 30%.