Experimental Study of the Impact of Dew on Soiling and Automatic Surface-Cleaning Set-Up to Optimize the Electricity Production of PV Panels in Polluted Atmosphere /

Abstract

The performance characteristics of PV modules are significantly affected by environmental factors, particularly by soiling. Dew factor can amplify the deleterious effect of soiling on the performance of PV modules. Therefore, this study investigates the morphological changes caused by dew in dust and proposes a novel automated water-based cleaning system to remove dew-induced dust-off PV modules. The experiment was conducted for the climatic conditions of Islamabad-Pakistan using poly-PV modules. The results showed that soiling losses at tilt angles of 23˚,33˚ and 43˚ degree were 16%, 12%, and 20%, respectively. The proposed cleaning system sprinkles water using flat fan nozzles. The used water was filtered and collected back to storage tank. The power recovered after effective three days of cleaning was 12%, 9.77%, and 18% respectively at tilt angles of 23˚,33˚, and 43˚ degrees. It was observed that cleaning process requires 7.33 ltrs of water to clean surface area of 1.48 m 2 . The cleaning process also provide cooling effect to PV modules decreasing front and back surface temperature at tilt angles of 23˚,33˚, and 43˚ degrees by 1.3˚, 0.52˚, and 0.3˚ C and 1.4˚, 0.7˚, and 0.3˚ C. The financial evaluation of the proposed automatic cleaning system indicates that it is feasible for domestic and commercial-sized PV systems.