FRONT-SURFACE SOILING MEASUREMENT DEVICE FOR PHOTOVOLTAIC MODULES

Every year, significant investments are directed to research institutes and other organizations around the world that are engaged in improving the efficiency of solar cells. The decrease in the efficiency of photovoltaic modules is largely caused by surface contamination and depends significantly on the re-gion where they are installed. In some locations, performance losses can be substantial. The construction of utility-scale PV plants requires vast land areas. Therefore, it is not advisable to build them in urban are-as or on agriculturally valuable lands. Utility-scale PV plants are usually built on unprofitable or barren lands such as semi-desert, desert areas, where access to water is limited. These are plots of land that are not in demand for agriculture or other constructions, but such regions are characterized by a large num-ber of sunny days a year. It takes a lot of water to clean the surfaces of the PV modules at the station. But in desert areas, the cost of water consumption can be equal to the price of fuel. To find a balance between the soiling losses in PV system and its surface cleaning costs, a device is required that monitors these pa-rameters and notifies when cleaning is needed – specifically, when energy losses outweigh the expenses. This paper describes a developed device for measuring soiling losses in PV module. The operating principle of the device is based on the phenomenon of diffuse light reflection from the surface of PV module. Exper-iments have proved that the developed device can be used to monitor the soiling losses in PV systems.

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