The Impact of Dust on the Performance and Efficiency of Solar Panels

Abstract

The reason why dust accumulation on solar panels, usually called Soiling, is a crucial factor in the decline of solar energy conversion performance. Dust covering the surface of a solar panel will block light reaching its cells, this combined with rapidly rising panel temperatures and deteriorated glass cover optical properties all contribute to declining outputs. It has been well demonstrated in past data that efficiency reductions due to dust contamination can fluctuate from 5% to 40%. This depends on many factors, especially the kind of dust involved, the size of its particles and the ambient environment. Such loss of efficiency not only reduces total energy output, but also entails major economic losses particularly for large-scale solar power plants. The soil pollution from dust settles over time to meet this challenge, the international scientific community has been continually working to research and develop new technologies and methods for cleaning solar panels.

Cheap techniques such as manual cleaning, automatic cleaning systems (ACSs), surface coating, and design optimization Interlaboratory Comparison of Solar Photovoltaic Module Performance have been employed to reduce dust impact so that production of sustainable electricity is ensured.