Dusting and Soiling Effect on PV Panel Performance: Case Study Open-pit Mining in South Sumatra, Indonesia

Abstract

South Sumatra has a great potential for renewable energy development, including solar energy. South Sumatra enjoys year-round sunshine due to its location on the equator. South Sumatra has open-pit coal mining, which creates open land suitable for solar power plant development. Given that the open-pit mining area is exposed to mining dust, this potential must be continuously explored and investigated to determine if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Environmental conditions strongly influence electrical generation via the photovoltaic effect, where shading and partial shading due to dust and soil deposition can reduce PV panel performance. This paper is part of research to study the feasibility of harvesting solar energy in open-pit mining. The experiments were conducted in six months; starting from June, the cleaned PV panel had higher average power and efficiency of 1.85 W and 0.94% than the soiled panel. The same condition also occurred in July (2.05 W and 1.06% higher), August (3.63 W and 1.30%), and December; it is 3.2 W and 1.57% higher than the soiled panel. The six-month experiments show that the collection of dust and soil can reduce the power output and efficiency; however, with regular cleaning maintenance, installing solar farms in an open-pit mining area is beneficial due to open space without shading and higher irradiance potential.