This paper reports the results of an investigation on the role of coolant flow distribution in cooling of a PV cell. This was done by comparing the cooling performance of two different designs of microchannels integrated with a PV cell. Two types of microchannels, a single-header and a multi-header, both with an identical hydraulic diameter of 0.667 mm were employed. Water was used as working fluid for cooling. The experiments were conducted at indoor condition for various coolant flow rates. The heat transfer enhancement from these layouts was compared and it was observed that the removed heat by the multi-header microchannel was about 19% higher than that of single-header one. Moreover, the results showed an increase about 28% in the generated electrical power for the multi-header microchannel in comparison with the single-header one. The whole results confirm the importance of coolant distribution on PV cell cooling performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.