Analysis of the Deposition of Pollutants on the Surface of Photovoltaic Modules

Abstract

This article presents the results of an experiment to measure the mass of contaminants naturally deposited on the surface of photovoltaic modules. Six types of PV modules included in the installation located on the roof of the C3 building (AGH campus, Krakow, Poland) were tested. More than 120 contamination samples were collected during the experiment, which lasted from 23 March to 15 June 2022. Detailed analysis showed a clear relationship between the tilt angle of the photovoltaic modules and the amount of contamination accumulating on them. The impact of the backsheet color and the way the module was mounted (vertical or horizontal) on the amount of dirt deposited on a given module was also recorded. Because the experiment lasted for many weeks, it was possible to investigate the intensity of the contamination build-up over the following weeks (in the absence of module cleaning) and the effect of precipitation on the module self-cleaning. During one measurement, a layer of contamination with a normalized mass of 181 mg/m2 was found to reduce PV module peak power by almost 4%.