Designing and Manufacturing a Robot for Dry-Cleaning PV Solar Panels

Abstract

Solar energy is one of the most important solutions to reduce the concerns of the severe climate change phenomenon. Granted, the main manner to harness solar energy to generate power electricity is implemented through arrays made up of PV solar panels. However, the accumulation of dust on PV surfaces nevertheless remains a serious issue that considerably reduces the efficient conversion of PV panels. Therefore, this research is aimed at automating both monitoring and cleaning of the PV panel’s surfaces through the design, manufacture, and operation and evaluating a dry-cleaning robot based on a color monitoring system. The preliminary results demonstrate that the color analysis of the PV panels can distinguish between the density of dust accumulated, where the total color differences between the clean PV panels and both the PV panels with simple, moderate, and intense dust were 43.69, 61.19, and 75.23. This raised the efficiency of the power produced for simple dust panels from 88.03 to 98.91% (one cleaning round), moderate dust panels from 70.72 to 92.96%, and intense dust panels from 39.05 to 62.11% (two cleaning rounds). These preliminary finds illustrate the possibility of using this approach to automatic monitoring the PV panel color and operate the cleaning robot.

Soiling impact and cleaning techniques for optimizing photovoltaic and concentrated solar power power production: A state-of-the-art review

“…In this context, plenty of research was done to improve the effeciency of PV panels by innovating new cleaning robots and developing other exciting techniques. Among these researches, Amin et al 117 have recently designed and developed a dry-cleaning robot that can autonomously detect dust formation and clean PV glasses through an image processing system and color analysis of the PV panel surfaces. Similarly, Khadka et al 118 have developed an automatic cleaning device particularly suited to arid regions, as it is capable of efficiently removing dry dust deposited on the front surfaces of PVs, and is designed to autonomously anticipate the most opportune time to perform the cleaning operation.…”

Why Does the PV Solar Power Plant Operate Ineffectively?

“…They depend on weather and season changes. The driving factors for the soiling losses are as follows [54]:…”

Application of Odometry and Dijkstra Algorithm as Navigation and Shortest Path Determination System of Warehouse Mobile Robot

“…1, the robot coordinates are obtained with equation ( 6) and (7). After that, equations ( 8), ( 9), (10), and ( 11) can be obtained.…”

“…Robot is a technological product that combines hardware and software with a propulsion program used in a particular job [5][6] [7][8] [9]. Many activities that are too heavy for humans can be done easily with the help of robots, such as activities that require large amounts of energy, high costs, fast time and detailed accuracy [10] [11]. Warehouse robots for delivery of goods have become an important part of the logistics and delivery of goods in the industry.…”