Dust Deposition’s Effect on Solar Photovoltaic Module Performance: An Experimental Study in India’s Tropical Region

Abstract

A solar PV panel works with maximum efficiency only when it is operated around its optimum operating point or maximum power point. Unfortunately, the performance of the solar cell is affected by several factors like sun direction, solar irradiance, dust accumulation, module temperature, as well as the load on the system. Dust deposition is one of the most prominent factors that influence the performance of solar panels. Because the solar panel is exposed to the atmosphere, dust will accumulate on its surface, reducing the quantity of sunlight reaching the solar cell and diminishing output. In the proposed work, a detailed investigation of the performance of solar PV modules is carried out under the tropical climatic condition of Chennai, India, where the presence of dust particles is very high. The data corresponding to four different dust samples of various densities at four solar irradiation levels of 220, 525, 702, and 905 W/m 2 are collected, and performance analysis is carried out. Based on the analysis carried out, the maximum power loss is found to be 73.51%, 66.29%, 65.46%, and 61.42%, for coal, sand, brick powder, and chalk dust respectively. Hence, it can be said that coal dust contributes to the maximum power loss among all four dust samples. Due to heat dissipation produced by dust deposition, the performance of solar PV modules is degraded as the temperature rose.

Spectral reflectance properties of sand layers covering an underlying target: experimental measurements and mathematical modelling

“…It is also worth underlining that the results in this study are preliminary and assigned with some uncertainty, particularly regarding sand layer uniformity and thickness variations in the experiments (particularly the thinnest sand layer), the low number of sand layered studied, number of measurements performed at each sand layer, sand density estimations, and sand volumes used per layer. Still, the overall impression from our experiments is that the extinction model seems promising in modelling light penetration through natural materials such as sand, and that it has potential applications within other fields such as agriculture [10,11,14,43,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62], remote sensing applications [13, 46-48, 50, 53, 57, 63], planetary science [41,44,45] or solar energy harvesting [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45] and that further studies are likely to improve the model fit and material optical parameters (reflectivity and extinction coefficient) further.…”

“…One candidate is further improvements in advanced camouflage products [17][18][19][20] or in camouflage assessment techniques [17,18,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Other potential applications may be within solar energy harvesting [35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43], in which a thin layer of sand material on the solar module surfaces may hamper the energy harvesting effectivity substantially, in fields related to planetary sciences [41,44,45], as well as for remote sensing applications [13,27,[46][47][48][49][50] of land areas or objects where the mapping accuracy, including sand and soil type predictions [51][52][53], may be affected by thin sand (or soil) layers covering vegetation or other interesting infrastructure.…”