Electrostatic cleaning Electrostatic cleaning is one of the prominent methods towards solar panel cleaning in a dusty environment. The concept has been developed with a high AC voltage which is applied to the electrodes deployed on the soiled solar panels to remove dust.
One of the most common ways to clean dust off solar panels is to spray them with water. But that’s a huge waste of water, especially in desert settings, where there are a lot of solar farms. The MIT scientists note in their new study, which is published in Science Advances:
Dust that accumulates on solar panels is a major problem, but washing the panels uses huge amounts of water. MIT engineers have now developed a waterless cleaning method to remove dust on solar installations in water-limited regions, improving overall efficiency. Image courtesy of the researchers.
Current techniques include (1) robotic cleaners, (2) electrostatic removal, (3) self-cleaning layer, and (4) automated water cleaning. Cleaning of the panel is achieved by an operator using a cleaning kit. The proposed technique efficiently cleans the panel.
A review of solar PV cleaning methods was made in Saravanan and Darvekar, 2018, Patil et al., 2017b. Different cleaning methods such as electrostatic cleaning, super hyperbolic coating, mechanical, microcontroller-based automatic cleaning, self-cleaning nanodomes, and various characteristics of dust particles were discussed.
Regular cleaning can help mitigate the impact of dust. Solar panel soiling is the accumulation of dust, dirt, and other pollutants that deposit themselves on solar panels over time. This soils or ‘dirty’s the surface, restricting the amount of sunlight that can reach the actual solar cells.