Experimental study of photovoltaic-thermal solar system, typically abbreviated as PVT system, is conducted in this paper. It consists of an innovative hybrid technology which incorporates photovoltaic and solar thermal collectors into a single device that produces both electrical and useful thermal energies simultaneously. For this purpose, a structured water-based PVT system is proposed, manufactured and adopted in this study. An experimental investigation into the energy and exergy performance of a prototype system combining electrical and thermal output in outdoor real environmental conditions is carried out. To assess how the cooling effect enhances energy production, this study benchmarks the efficiency gains of cooled PVT systems against traditional uncooled PV technology under identical weather conditions. Experimental tests were conducted alongside on-site electrical and thermal measurements for both systems to support this analysis. The results obtained indicate that the hybrid PVT system is more efficient, producing significantly more energy than the reference PV module. Notably, the electrical power of the PVT collector increased by nearly 27% compared to the traditional PV panel, and the thermal efficiency of the system rises by about 45.18%. The quality of the extracted energy is assessed here using an exergy analysis. The PVT system achieved electrical and thermal exergy efficiencies of 10.92% and 1.99%, respectively.