Automated Solar Panel Cleaner (original) (raw)
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With the increasing demand for renewable energy, solar photovoltaic technology is being a topic of concern. However, due to the accumulation of dust and dirt over the panel surface, the performance of the photovoltaic system degrades to a noticeable number. To address this issue: a fully automated, cost worthy and efficient system needs to be invented. This paper presents the design and fabrication process of a prototype able to clean the panel surface. The prototype of this system comprises of a cleaning robot and a cloud interface: the cleaning robot is mobile and able to clean the entire solar array back and forth, with its separately driven cleaning rotatory brush; whereas, the cloud interface is a human-machine interface featuring the distant monitoring and control of the robot. Additionally, to notify the performance of distantly placed solar farm, a sensing unit consisting of sensors was added to this system. Furthermore, to add an automatic cleaning feature, a month-long data of totally clean and dusty panel was processed with regression analysis, and the developed regression model was programmed into the sensing unit. The sensing unit added with the regression model is named as an autonomous unit, as it predicts the suitable time for cleaning action. According to the system evaluation done on a demonstration PV module, it was found that the designed system can clean dry dust accumulated over the panel's surface. Moreover, by attaching the metal rail tracks on a long solar array, the system seems to be implementable on a large scale solar farm.
International Journal of Research, 2018
Solar Energy is the most abundant form of energy available on earth. Fortunately it is also renewable source of Energy produced by the Fusion of Helium on Sun's surface. This Energy is becoming popular because of natural advantages. Photo Voltaic (PV) Modules are the devices used to convert solar energy in to electrical energy. The light rays consisting of Photons strike the Activated Silicon Junction Panels to produce Electrons which in turn constitutes to Potential difference across the junction there by generating current flow. Lot of high level research is going on in the areas of Materials Engineering, Silicon Junction etc. to tap the complete potential of solar energy, sadly the highest efficiency commercially achieved lies between 16-22%. It is very clear from the above explanation that increase in Photons increase the efficiency, but the settlement of dust particles on Solar Panels reduce the number of photons reaching the Silicon junction hence, drastically decreasing their Efficiency. Presently the panels are cleaned manually, which requires lot of Labor, Water and time, It is not cost effective also. Large Solar Energy Parks requires lots of resources for maintaining which proves to be very costly. Hence there is a requirement of a system which would eliminate all these problems. In the present Work, we conduct a detailed survey on how the dust settlement affects the performance of the PV module and then design an effective automatic in-house and cost effective cleaning system to keep the top surface of the panels clean thereby maintaining its highest possible efficiency.
Developing an Automatic Dust Cleaning Unit to Improve the Photovoltaic Panels productivity
2020
Egypt has one of the best weather conditions for producing renewable energy in the world. As a result, there has been a proven market pull for solar energy in the region in a growing clean energy export market as clean energy. Solar energy maintenance is relatively low comparing to other power generation sources. Although, less maintenance is required, the important factor that reduces its generation according to accumulate dust on solar PV modules. Dust accumulation effectively reduces the energy yield of solar panels. So, the current paper deals with the locally designed automatic cleaning mechanism for solar PV modules. The designed mechanism consists of an electronic solar module that automatically cleans the solar module at the required rate. without requiring water to clean the solar module. This cleaning mechanism is also suitable for pole mounted street lighting systems where daily manual cleaning is not possible and could be more costly. Six months later from start experime...
Design and Development of Automated Solar Panel Cleaning Device
journal of emerging ideas and technology, 2019
The increasing awareness about the utilization renewable sources has helped solar energy to reach its pinnacle. The solar energy has grabbed the eyeball attention of much research organization to improve its efficiency. However the maintenance issue still remains ignored. This causes significant decrease in solar PV panels efficiency .The accumulated dust on solar panel block the cell from the sun's radiation and act as an adverse screening effect, it is necessary to keep the solar cells in pristine condition. The current solar panel cleaning methods like manual cleaning, water jet cleaning and robots used in large scale industries. But every cleaning method mentioned above have their own set of limitations to find its application in domestic sector. In this research the automated cleaning device is developed to fulfill the requirements of domestic sector. The main feature of this device is that it ensures three times cleaning of PV panels in its every pass. The device operates on electricity generated by the solar PV panels. The regular cleaning of PV panels using this device will increase the efficiency by 24-29 %. Thus the device positions itself as an economical alternative for domestic sector.
Development and Evaluation of Dust Cleaning System for a Solar PV Panel
Journal of Engineering Research, 2022
The most promising application of solar energy is the conversion of solar energy into electrical energy by using solar photovoltaic (PV) panel. The performance of solar based PV panel is definitely influenced by the amount of solar radiation, which are reaching on the panel surface. Since the solar PV panels are operating in open atmosphere dust particles get deposited on their surfaces and most of the times they have to work in this condition. These deposited dust particles create a layer of dust particles over the panel surface which prevents the 100% penetration of solar radiation into the panel surface. Therefore, proper cleaning of the panel surface becomes very necessary. In order to improve the performance of the PV panel an automatic microcontroller driven dust cleaning technique is developed which is capable of removing the accumulated dust particles from the PV panel surface. Moreover, an experimental study has been performed to analyse the efficiency of this developed tec...
Design and development of solar panel cleaning system
Mantech Publications Pvt Ltd, 2019
The main method for harnessing solar power is with arrays made up of photovoltaic (PV) panels. Accumulation of dust and debris on even one panel in an array reduces their efficiency in energy generation considerably and emphasizes the need to keep the panel's Surface as clean as possible. In this Project a novel design is to be develop a AC current based automatic cleaning of solar panels. A tool is designed based on the array size, and water pumping/sprinkling mechanism is designed based on the amount/nature of dust accumulated. In terms of daily energy generation, the presented automatic-cleaning scheme provides about 30% more energy output when compared to the dust accumulated PV module.
Smart Solar Photovoltaic Panel Cleaning System
Peer Review Journal of Solar & Photoenergy Systems, 2019
With the increasing demand for renewable energy, solar photovoltaic technology is being a topic of concern. However, due to the accumulation of dust and dirt over the panel surface, the performance of the photovoltaic system degrades to a noticeable number. To address this issue: a fully automated, cost worthy and efficient system needs to be invented. This paper presents the design and fabrication process of a prototype able to clean the panel surface. The prototype of this system comprises of a cleaning robot and a cloud interface: the cleaning robot is mobile and able to clean the entire solar array back and forth, with its separately driven cleaning rotatory brush; whereas, the cloud interface is a human-machine interface featuring the distant monitoring and control of the robot. Additionally, to notify the performance of distantly placed solar farm, a sensing unit consisting of sensors was added to this system. Furthermore, to add an automatic cleaning feature, a month-long data of totally clean and dusty panel was processed with regression analysis, and the developed regression model was programmed into the sensing unit. The sensing unit added with the regression model is named as an autonomous unit, as it predicts the suitable time for cleaning action. According to the system evaluation done on a demonstration PV module, it was found that the designed system can clean dry dust accumulated over the panel's surface. Moreover, by attaching the metal rail tracks on a long solar array, the system seems to be implementable on a large scale solar farm.
AUTOMATIC SOLAR PANEL CLEANING SYSTEM
Energy is one of the major issues that the world is facing in India, the supply of energy has been one of the major problems for both urban and rural households. About 60% to 70% of the energy demand of the country is met by fuelwood and agriculture residues. Solar energy is a renewable source of energy, which has a great potential and it is radiated by the sun. Renewable energy is important to replace the using of electric energy generated by petroleum. Solar power has become a source of renewable energy and solar energy application should be enhanced. The solar PV modules are generally employed in dusty environments which are the case tropical countries like India. The dust gets accumulated on the front surface of the module and blocks the incident light from the sun. It reduces the power generation capacity of the module. The power output reduces as much as by 50% if the module is not cleaned for a month. The cleaning system has been designed cleans the module by controlling the Arduino programming. To remove the dust in the PV modules to improving the power efficiency.
Performance Enhancement of Solar Photovoltaic Panel Using Automated Solar Panel Cleaner
International Journal of Mechanical and Production Engineering Research and Development (IJMPERD), 2020
In recent years, India has increased its solar power installation capacity and utilizes around 7.5% of the world's total solar energy consumption. Extensive research is in progress to utilize better materials for solar photovoltaic panels. The present study focuses on an equally important and rather neglected aspect of cleaning the solar photovoltaic panels for achieving better output. Manual cleaning of the panels is often difficult at many locations and suffers from some inherent drawbacks of manual operation. In the present experimental study, an automated cleaning system using Arduino and motor controller has been implemented for cleaning of solar photovoltaic panels. The performance of the panels equipped with the aforementioned cleaning system is compared with panel not using this mechanism. The experimental data reveals that the panels with automated cleaning systems were able to produce more power output up to an extent of 25% of the rated output. There is thus a wide sc...
Waterless PV Panel Cleaner with Semi- Automated Operation
2021
With growing costs of electricity and concern for the environmental impact of fossil fuels, implementatio n of eco-friendly energy sources like solar power are rising. The most abundant source of energy for all the forms of life on the planet Earth is solar energy. It is also the basic source of all the energy except nuclear energy. The main method for harnessing solar power is solar panels. This project aims at increasing the efficiency of solar power plants by solving the problem of accumulation of dust on the surface of solar panel which leads to reduction in plant output and overall plant efficiency as much as by 30%.It proposes to develop a Solar Panel Cleaning System which could remove the accumulated dust on its surface on regular basis and maintain the solar power plant efficiency by maintaining its output. The design that was decided upon by us consists of a mechanism, the system is robotic system which could move autonomously on the surface of solar panels by using roller ...