Rain and wind can be enough to scour some dust from PV panels, said Lin Simpson, who served with Muller as the co-principal investigator at NREL for a $6 million Department of Energy-funded research effort into
Average global surface solar resources and PV electricity generation, 2003–2014 a, POAIs at the surface for fixed panels under the all-sky condition (with aerosols and clouds).
Photovoltaic (PV) power generation has become one of the key technologies to reach energy-saving and carbon reduction targets. However, dust accumulation will significantly affect the electrical, optical, and thermal performance of PV panels and cause some energy loss.
In present study, the effect of environmental dust particles on power loss in PV module has been evaluated by measuring the electrical performance index such as voltage, current and power. The minimum power value of 3.88 W has been observed during the accumulation of rice husk on PV module.
The impact of dust accumulation on the thermal performance of photovoltaic (PV) systems primarily manifests in the alteration of PV module temperature.
The mathematical correlations of dust effects on PV panels could be computed beforehand considering several parameters. These include but not limited to rate of light transmittance rays, the PV power loss due to soiling and the loss of energy efficiency of PV system for model representations.
The reduction in solar efficiency due to dust on PV panel is approximately 40%. In this context, various PV system cleaning methods are adopted currently (Kumar and Chaurasia 2014). The analysis under this category of the environmental effects is the most frequent and problematic one as compared to others.
Density of dust deposition on a panel surface depends on dust properties, environment, weather, module properties and its installation design. Appropriate countermeasures as proposed earlier should be taken to eliminate or reduce the effect of dust on solar PV panel efficiency.
