Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

Background: Dust soiling is a main contributing environmental issue with the climatic condition of Western Rajasthan that influences adversely the performance of solar PV technology. The deposition of dust particles reduces the solar output by hampering the solar radiation.

Objectives: To explore the trend of dust soiling rate over different seasons in a year and its impact on the performance of solar photovoltaic (PV) system in Western Rajasthan in India. Especially, dust particle settlement is primarily affecting the optical properties of the PV modules, which results in declining their output electrical energy yield. Thus, it adds significantly to quantify the effect of soiling by measuring transmittance losses and soiling ratio with different dust particles.

Methods: This article presents a significant loss in output energy yield of photovoltaic system with the layer by layer deposition of the different dust particles in Western Rajasthan. In the context of physical properties, the XRD and SEMEDS analysis of the collected dust sample from SOTA is carried out, and also the dust particle size study has been performed in order to observe the sediment characteristics of various dust samples in Western Rajasthan. The preliminary results depict the optical (glass transmittance) and electrical (soiling ratio) parameters strongly depend on the dust properties and its deposition density.

Findings: With this consideration, the highest power loss is observed in the Bikaner dust sample (S1) due to its high transmittance loss (96.1%) and whiles the minimum for Barmer (78.4%).

Applications: This study can be useful to guide the appropriate level of dust soiling mitigation on solar PV systems in an arid or particular region. It can also be decided on the optimal cleaning schedule in actual conditions in the year.

Keywords: Dust Soiling, Desert, PV Module, Air Pollution, Solar Energy, Transmittance, Soiling Ratio.