An Indoor Experimental Study on the Effect of Dust on a Solar PV Panel

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of soiling on the performance of a solar photovoltaic (PV) panel at controllable indoor conditions. The investigation took a dynamic study approach into the I-V characteristics curve at the National Energy Research Center (NERC), Soba, Khartoum state, Sudan. The soiling used dust samples collected from the premises of NERC. The experiments were conducted using some of the prepared dust samples' particles distributed on a mono-crystalline silicon solar PV panel with a constant power light source. At different dust layers the solar PV was characterized by computing the resulting power generated of the PV panel. It has been found that the accumulation of the dust on the surface of the solar photovoltaic panel, 14.6 µm and 43.9 µm thicknesses, can reduce the panel's generated power by 17.1% and 67.6%, respectively. In addition, a full blockage of the solar photovoltaic panel's characteristics has been reported at 109.8 µm thickness of the dust layer.