Smart system for dust detecting and removing from solar cells

Abstract

In the last decades, solar energy gained the most demand as it represents a green and sustainable source of energy. One of the most important obstacles for solar energy production in Iraq is the dirtiness of the panel surface as it causes a shadow that reduces its performance. From other hand, Iraq location has a large frequency of sand dust storms. This research proposed a method to eliminate the impact of dust and dirtiness on the performance of the solar panel in power production. The proposed method monitors the power generation and cleans the photovoltaic surface when required. Arduino Uno microcontroller was used to control the washing task with windscreen wiper tool which energized when the output power dropped to 50% from its rate value. In addition, the proposed method presented a comparison on the solar panel performance with and without the proposed method. The results show the ability of the washing mechanism in maintaining the solar panel performance efficiently after the exposure to dust accumulation.