Experimental Study on the Effect of Dust Deposition on Photovoltaic Panels

Abstract

In recent years, PV is considered to be one of the main way to solve the current energy crisis. PV is generally built in exposed areas such as deserts and wasteland. And the efficiency of power generation of PV is easy affected by the dust accumulated on it. The research expounds the "three factors" of the effect of dust on PV, namely shielding effect, temperature effect and corrosion effect, then an efficiency evaluation method for photovoltaic cells is proposed. Finally, the field experiments show that with the increase of dust density, the short-circuit current, open-circuit voltage, and output power of the PV both decrease. The dust with a density of 10 g/m2 can reduce the maximum power of the PV by about 34%. In the initial stage of PV dust accumulation, dust has the greatest impact on its output performance. In addition, the dust density and the conversion efficiency have better nonlinear correlation. As the dust accumulation density gradually increases, the PV conversion efficiency gradually decreases. When the dust density increases to a certain extent, the PV conversion efficiency tends to be stable.