Iraqi Journal of Physics (Nov 2010)
New Technique for Treatment of the dust accumulation from PV solar panels surface
Abstract
One of the most important problems facing the world today is the energy problem. The solution was in finding renewable energy sources such as solar energy. The solar energy applications in Iraq is facing many problems . One of the most important problems is the accumulation of dust on the solar panels surface which causes decreasing its performance sharply. In the present work, a new technique was presented by using two-axis solar tracking system to reduce the accumulated dust on the solar panel surface and compared it with the fixed solar panels which installed at tilt angles 30° and 45°. The results indicated that the maximum losses of the output power due to accumulation of dust on the fixed solar panels is about 31.4% and 23.1% respectively for 34 days period of accumulation(from 18-2-2010 to 25-3-2010), while the maximum losses of output power for the solar panel with two-axis tracking system is about 8.5% for the same period of accumulation