Desert storm: Dust clouds like this one in the Persian Gulf can cut solar power output if dust accumulates on the panels. New technology that cleans the dust off might help.
NASA JPL
A technology intended for Mars missions may find use on solar installations in the deserts on Earth.
One of the best places to put a solar panel is in the desert, where it's sunny. But deserts are also dusty, which means the panels have to be washed frequently so the dust doesn't stop them from capturing sunlight. New technology could provide a solution--by letting solar panels clean themselves.
The technology was developed for future rover missions to Mars, but it could work here on Earth to keep solar panels operating at peak capacity. It uses electrostatic charge to repel dust and force it to the edges of the panels. It can remove 90 percent of the dust on a solar panel in a two-minute cycle, says Malay Mazumder, a research professor at Boston University who led the work. The technology was described this week at the American Chemical Society meeting in Boston.
Dust that accumulates on solar panels and blocks the light can cripple rovers on the moon or Mars. The Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers lasted longer than expected because occasional gusts of wind have cleared off their panels. "But we may not be lucky all of the time," says Rao Surampudi, a project monitor at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Indeed, the Mars Pathfinder rover mission in the 1990s didn't benefit from such winds.
Dust has also bedeviled solar installations on Earth. For example, dust storms have cut power production by 40 percent at a large, 10-megawatt solar power plant in the United Arab Emirates. Washing the panels can be time-consuming or require costly automation--and it takes a lot of water, a precious resource in the desert. "With this new technology, solar panels can be automatically cleaned without water or labor," Mazumder says.
The system takes advantage of the fact that most dust particles, particularly in dry environments, have an electric charge. A transparent electrode material such as indium tin oxide delivers an alternating current to the top surface of the panel. As it swings between being positively and negatively charged, it creates an electric field that repels positively and negatively charged particles. The electric field also helps to impart a charge to uncharged dust particles, allowing them to be quickly repelled as they come in contact with the panel. The researchers have designed the system so that the electric field works its way from one side of the solar panel to the other, gradually moving the dust along until it falls off.
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Oil-rich Abu Dhabi is building a green metropolis. Should the rest of the world care?
Here on Earth wouldn't it be cheaper to hire a immigrant with a bucket and rag?
Re: Self-Cleaning Solar Panels
Funny but that is how some companies think
Of course you have to factor in ALL the costs.
Free medical care for the immigrants at tons of clinics, paid for by fed and state govts. Increased police costs and reduced taxes as many won't be paying either income tax or other taxes.
Cost of people who, now here, think they are entitled to free everything and hate whitey, while waving the flag of the country with the decrepit economy that they loved so much that they left. And the cost of increased crime as they won't talk to the police after a crime happens to them, either because they are illegal or in their culture the police were all corrupt.
Re: Self-Cleaning Solar Panels
Oh, stifle yourself. This is about solar panels, not your puerile "political" and racist whining.
Re: Self-Cleaning Solar Panels
jhoughton1 loses by jumping immediately to Godwin's Law II (The Sequel)
Do not pass go. Go directly to fail! heh heh
While there are many advances in solar panels, the most cost-effective is probably the micro inverter. With higher power yield versus string inverters and exceptional monitoring capacities micros make good financial sense.
In considering renewable power generation, commercial users should also consider fuel cells (particularly hydrogen fuel cells). Compared to solar PV, fuel cell energy can be a much better financial investment.
For more see http://biggreenzero.com/bgz-powerplan/fuel-cell-energy.html
Certainly any add on needs to be considered on a cost basis
Your comment on fuel cells doesn't make much sense
Fuel cells are great but they convert hydrogen to electricity. They do not collect any energy by themselves. They will likely become a direct drop-in replacement for ICE (internal combustion engines) and are twice as efficient The hydrogen they need needs to come from somewhere. (some will also run on nat gas which also needs to come from elsewhere.)
Solar panels are one source of the electricity needed to create hydrogen from water or to reduce aluminum oxide to aluminum to later combine with water for hydrogen on demand, e.g. for vehicles.
I see some major issues with the above solution:
1. Dust is not the only problem in the desert but associated humidity is also a problem (especially in Middle East). Obviously, major chunk of the region where the solutions are being sought is cut of from the technology.
2. Solar modules are designed in such a way that even 1% shade on it will make the module totally non-functional. Essentially, that 1% is creating a bottle neck in the solar cells links that are connected in series. With 90% dust removed, you still have another 10% which will stay on the module. Obviously, this solution will not totally eliminate human intervention in cleaning.
What if you give the panel a clear thin teflon layer coating on the panel to make materials slippery and implement air nozzles supply by an air pump and this air pump activated when every the charge level set by your threshold parameter . IMHO - Best regards,
Wouldn't it suit to have a glass sheet covering the solar panels. I mean, it would save the solar panels from dust and would let the solar energy pass coz it is transparent.
NOC on Solar can aid in self-cleaning Solar Panels
NOC on Solar, from Clarke Clean, http://www.clarkeclean.com, has developed an ultra thin nanotechnology that creates an anti-static, hydrophobic surface on solar panels. For pennies per square foot, this technology can be applied to panels and will last the life of the panels (depending on your specific environment). Because it is anti-static, it allows dust, pollen, dirt to rest on the highest surface of the solar panel glass so that when Mother Nature steps in with rain, snow, wind, the debris is easily removed. As a homeowner or business owner of panels, best practice is to have a monitoring system on your array. This will tell you when your panels need to be cleaned. If they are treates with NOC on Solar, cleanings will be fewer and far between and when you do need to clean, cleaning will be faster.
Europe long ago embraced the fact that you have to clean solar panels. In the US we have been sold the "Emperor's New Clothes (Hans Christian Andersen)". We've been told that solar panels don't need maintenance, when in fact they do. Would you park your $90,000 Porsche outside and expect it to remain clean? Of course not! The windshield would need to be washed so that you could see thru it. Solar Panel glass works the same way. It needs to be cleaned because it gets dirty and light transmittance is reduced just as visibility is reduced on a windshield. If light transmittance is reduced your panels aren't working.
The difference with NOC on Solar is that we are the thinnest hydrophobic technology on the market. A hydrophobic surface can be created with other products (wax, oils, polymers) but because of their chemical make up, they actually impede light transmittance. If you rubbed a layer of oil on your windshield you would have a hydrophobic windshield, one that is not long lasting, and one that does not provide high visibility. Treating your solar panel with a wax or oil has the same negative effect on light transmittance.
In a nutshell, you want to treat your panels with the thinnest solution (nanotechnology), to create a high transmittance, hydrophobic solar panel. NOC on Solar is the only one on the market that meets all these points.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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nlnickel
1 Comment
Self-Cleaning Solar Panels
It is reasonable to only consider solutions that add less than 1% of the cost to the panel? A more reasonable evaluation might be a lifetime cost per watt vs total output equation. What is your option?
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jhoughton1
2 Comments
Re: Self-Cleaning Solar Panels
One percent seems pretty stingy. I have a fairly large array on my residence; no one told me anything about cleaning it while they were selling it to me. The roof isn't that accessible and my old bones can't take a fall off the roof. Hosing off the dust from below gets some but not all of it and bird poop and bee poop require some elbow grease applied in person.
When I consider the time and effort that goes into keeping the system at full efficiency, plus the cost of electricity that I'm not generating when the system is working at sub-peak performance over the life of the system -- I would gladly have paid more than a 1% premium for something that is easier to clean or that doesn't need cleaning as often in order to operate at full efficiency.
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