Passive daytime radiative cooling surfaces can be integrated with solar energy plants, referred to as solar energy–radiative cooling (SE–RC), to improve functionality and performance by preventing solar cells from overheating and thus degrading. Since solar cells have a maximum efficiency of 33.7% (with the average commercial PV panel having a conversion rate around 20%), the majority of absorbed power produces excess heat and increases the operating temperature of the system. Solar cell efficiency declines 0.4-0.5% for every 1ᵒC increase in temperature.
Passive daytime radiative cooling can extend the life of solar cells by lowering the operating temperature of the system. Integrating PDRCs into solar energy systems is also relatively simple, given that "most solar energy harvesting systems have a sky-facing flat plate structural design, which is similar to radiative cooling systems." Integration has been shown to "produce a higher energy gain per unit area" while also increasing the "total useful working time." Integrated systems can mitigate issues of "limited working time and low energy gain" and are "a current research hotspot," as per Ahmed et al.
Methods have been proposed to potentially enhance cooling performance. Lu et al. proposes using a "full-spectrum synergetic management (FSSM) strategy to cool solar cells, which combines radiative cooling and spectral splitting to enhance radiative heat dissipation and reduce the waste heat generated by the absorption of sub-BG photons."
Outdoor tests using various PDRC materials, some more scalable than others, have demonstrated various degrees of cooling power:
* Wang et al. (2021), a periodic pyramid-textured polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) radiative film, cooled commercial silicon solar cells by over 2 °C. 
* Lee et al. (2021), a visibly clear PDRC designed "using a rational design to deploy an optical modulator (n-hexadecane) in  aerogel microparticles within a silicone elastomer matrix," cooled commercial silicon solar cells by 7.7 °C on average.
* Tang et al. (2022), nanoporous anodic aluminum oxide film, flatpanel solar cell relative efficiency improvement of ~2.72%, concentrated solar cell relative efficiency improvement of ~16.02%, described as "a high-performance and scalable radiative cooler."
* Zhao et al. (2022), a silica micro-grating photonic cooler, cooled commercial silicon cells by 3.6 °C under solar intensity of 830 W m to 990 W m.