Dust On Solar Panels Efficiency

Dust often accumulates on the glass of solar modules highlighted in this negative image as black dots which reduces the amount of light admitted to the solar cells solar cell efficiency refers to the portion of energy in the form of sunlight that can be converted via photovoltaics into electricity by the solar cell.

Dust on solar panels efficiency.

As soon as your panels are out in the open in the clean air or not so clean air dust will start to settle on them blocking sunlight reducing their efficiency and costing you money. Dirt accumulation soiling is accounted for by our design team when calculating solar production. After cleaning the study s solar panels saw a 50 percent jump in efficiency. The highest efficiency solar panels on the market today can reach almost 23 percent efficiency.

One of the reasons for this is dirt. Solar panel efficiency is a measure of how much sunlight that hits the surface area of a solar panel is converted into usable electricity. As it turns out solar energy itself is clean but the air between the sun and the panels is not. This large jump in efficiency resulted in the power output of a standard size.

The new technique removed 98 percent of dust particles. If a solar panel has 20 percent efficiency that means it s capable of converting 20 percent of the sunshine hitting it into electricity. But a small percentage around 8 percent was from. Research demonstrated a decrease in energy collected and produced when panels were blocked by dirt dust and debris as much as 25 difference in some cases.

The obvious solution is to pay someone to clean those panels or get out there and clean them yourself. According to their findings an average of 1 loss of incident solar radiation was resulted from dust that had accumulated on the surface of the solar panel with a tilt angle of 30. Dirty solar panels will see an average 3 5 production boost when cleaned. Most of the stuff caked on the panels was ordinary dirt and dust.

The average efficiency of solar panels falls between the 17 to 19 percent efficiency range. So if a solar panel has an efficiency rating of 15 that means 15 of the sunlight that hits the solar panels will be converted into electricity. In my opinion this is an insignificant loss when considering how dirty the solar panels were.