Preliminary design and test of a water spray solar panel cleaning system

Abstract

Abstract Solar panels are susceptible to dust accumulation on their surface for long term operation. Scheduled cleaning work is thus important to maintain the efficiency and reliability of the solar panel for producing electricity. The paper presents a preliminary design of the cleaning mechanism for the solar panel surface using a semiautomatic wiper control system. A DC motor is utilized to power the wiper. The amount of water is sprayed over the solar panel surface, while the wiper is moving back and forth. The manual switch buttons are used to control the rotation direction of the DC motor. The experimental tests are conducted to obtain the solar panel performance, namely output voltage, output current, output power, and panel efficiency under clean and dusty conditions. The comparison of both conditions has been made to determine the cleaning effectiveness of the proposed prototype. The test results show that the wiper swept repetition of 10, 20, and 30 times delivers 57.0 percent, 79.1 percent, and 86.7 percent of the performance of the initial clean surface condition, respectively.