Evaluation of Dust Elements on Photovoltaic Module Performance: an Experimental Study

Abstract

Dust is a natural phenomenon, and it represents all the components suspended in the air. Dust causes the photovoltaic performance to deteriorate. The main dust components concentrations vary from one geographic location to another and from one season to another. These components also have different effects on the PV power losses. Therefore, studying the effect of the concentration of each dust component separately can give a greater clarification and detail of how the accumulated dust affects the behavior of the PV module. In this study, the dust accumulated on a photovoltaic cell was collected and analyzed into its basic components. The results showed that most of the dust of Sohar city consists mostly of sand (65%) coming from the Empty Quarter desert adjacent to the Al-Batinah region. Also, volatile building materials such as cement and gypsum have high concentrations in this dust, which are 5.25% and 4.94%, respectively. In addition, high concentrations of ash 4.92%, which is resulting from burning fuels in smelters, power plants, and refineries. The effect of most of the studied dust components was limited on the current of the photovoltaic cell, but their effect was clearer on the cell voltage. As a result, the decrease in power generation was especially evident in the case of ash, cement, and new garment, but the biggest decrease was due to sand. While iron powder and red sand had the least effect on the performance of the photovoltaic cell.