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A new correlation between photovoltaic panel's efficiency and amount of sand dust accumulated on their surface

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 24; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14786450500291834

1478-646X

Ahmad Y. Al-Hasan, Adel A. Ghoneim,

Photovoltaic Systems and Sustainability

The accumulation of dust particles on the surface of photovoltaic (PV) panel greatly affects its performance especially in the dusty areas. In the present work, an experimental and theoretical study has been carried out to investigate the effect of sand dust concentration on the efficiency of PV panels. A stand-alone PV system is designed to carry out this work. The I–V characteristics have been measured simultaneously for both clean and dusty modules. It has been found that the short circuit current and the maximum output power decrease significantly as dust particles start to accumulate on the panel surface up to a concentration of 1 g/m2, but the rate of decrease is slower for concentrations beyond that value. The reduction in short circuit current in one sample of study is found to be ∼40%, whereas it is ∼34% in the maximum output power. In contrast, it is stated that the open circuit voltage is not sensitive to sand dust accumulation. A significant degradation in the efficiency of PV modules is observed for sand dust accumulation up to 1 g/m2. A linear relation has been proposed to correlate the degradation in efficiency to the amount of sand dust accumulated on the module surface. This relation can help PV system designers to reliably predict the effect of sand dust accumulation on PV module efficiency under real environmental conditions.