Analyzing the Impact of Dust Accumulation on Power Generation and Bifacial Gain

Abstract

Dust accumulation on PV modules, influenced by a variety of environmental parameters, such as relative humidity, wind speed, and particulate matter (PM) concentration, is one of the most common detrimental factors in reducing the power output. An investigation is conducted to quantify the impact of dust accumulation on power generation and bifacial gain in this work. Based on the experiments, the daily dust deposition rate as well as its correlation with relative humidity, wind speed, PM concentration, and ambient temperature is determined. Furthermore, the soiling loss (SL%) and soiling rate (SR) are analyzed over the period of the study. At the end of the test period, the SL% and SR are reported to be 6.86% and 0.233, respectively. This percentage loss is further used to simulate the annual energy yield and bifacial gain. A clean bifacial PV system recorded a higher performance ratio (0.83) and lower collection loss <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">L_C</i> (0.8 kWh/kW <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">p</sub> /day) compared to the lower performance ratio (0.78) and greater collection loss <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">L_C</i> (1.12 kWh/kW <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">p</sub> /day) of a soiled bifacial PV system. The yield of the monofacial PV system is far lower under the soiled state, and this discrepancy allows for greater bifacial gain (BG) (7.11%) to be realized under the soiled state of the modules. Although a bifacial module under soiled state will generate lower output than its cleaner counterpart, BG under soiled state is governed by the difference in yield from a monofacial system at a greater extent than a bifacial system.