IoT Based Self-Cleaning and Automated Fault Detection of Solar Panel System

Abstract

Solar photovoltaic panel tends to lose its performance, when foreign particles start accumulating over it. To get panel at its best, frequent cleaning action is required by some means. It would be beyond imagination, if there comes a task to clean entire solar farm covering miles squares and more, hence a better solution is required. Solar photovoltaic panel cleaning system is a robotic system designed to clean solar panel surface; in order to sustain the efficiency. To avoid frequent site visits, robots can be placed in each array, and by further deploying Internet of Things (IoTs), distant monitoring and cleaning can be achieved. The command for the robots can be given by distant operator through the cloud they are connected with. To make this system even smarter, a separate sensing unit shall be installed along with different sensors that can detect the limit of dust deposition and shall automatically order to perform cleaning action. This study presents the need of cleaning system, which is followed by design and fabrication of robot that meets the design specification and required performance. A month-long data is collected and analyzed to formulate and validate the automatic cleaning algorithm in real environment. From this study, it is concluded that, the IoT can be implemented in the solar PV cleaning system which can improve the system performance significantly.