Experimentally Investigating the Effect of Temperature Differences in the Particle Deposition Process on Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Modules

Yu Jiang,Lin Lu

doi:10.3390/su8111091

Yu Jiang, Lin Lu

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su8111091

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Abstract

This paper reports an experimental investigation of the dust particle deposition process on solar photovoltaic (PV) modules with different surface temperatures by a heating plate to illustrate the effect of the temperature difference (thermophoresis) between the module surface and the surrounding air on the dust accumulation process under different operating temperatures. In general, if the temperature of PV modules is increased, the energy conversion efficiency of the modules is decreased. However, in this study, it is firstly found that higher PV module surface temperature differences result in a higher energy output compared with those modules with lower temperature differences because of a reduced accumulation of dust particles. The measured deposition densities of dust particles were found to range from 0.54 g/m2 to 0.85 g/m2 under the range of experimental conditions and the output power ratios were found to increase from 0.861 to 0.965 with the increase in the temperature difference from 0 to 50 °C. The PV module with a higher temperature difference experiences a lower dust density because of the effect of the thermophoresis force arising from the temperature gradient between the module surface and its surrounding air. In addition, dust particles have a significant impact on the short circuit current, as well as the output power. However, the influence of particles on open circuit voltage can be negligible.

Highlights

A common solar energy utilization technology, solar photovoltaic (PV) modules that can convert solar radiation into usable electricity by traditional semi-conductor solar cell, has been widely used because it can continuously provide clean and green energy
Even though a high temperature causes a significant reduction in energy conversion, a high temperature difference between the PV module surface and ambient air can decrease dust accumulation on PV modules
This paper firstly conducts experiments to investigate the effect of temperature differences of dust particle deposition on the solar PV module and finds that the high surface temperature can greatly decrease particle deposition

Summary

Introduction

A common solar energy utilization technology, solar photovoltaic (PV) modules that can convert solar radiation into usable electricity by traditional semi-conductor solar cell, has been widely used because it can continuously provide clean and green energy. Jiang et al [8] have studied the effect of dust on three different kinds of PV modules under controlled conditions in laboratories and have pointed out the relationship between deposition density and energy output reduction. It appears that the decreased influence of accumulated dust on the output of PV modules is significant [9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. Cristaldi et al evaluated the impact of both aging and dust deposition by analyzing the differences between actual power production and theoretical power output [21]

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