Impact of Shading, Dust Accumulation and Temperature rise on the Performance of Solar PV: The Case of Pakistan

Abstract

The population growth of Pakistan has brought serious problems for the population itself. One of those is the energy crisis. Pakistan has gone through serious energy crisis that has led the population to explore and adopt alternate means of energy. One of those is through solar panels. The people of Pakistan, being technically unaware, install solar panels at their premise without keeping in view proper installation and maintenance measures. As a result of which they could not enjoy the true fruitfulness of the solar system. This paper presents the effect of certain physical and environmental aspects on the performance of solar panels. The solar panels installed in Pakistan face degradation of efficiency due to shading as a result of improper installation site, temperature rise during summer, and dust accumulation due to dust storms. The paper individually discusses the effect of shading, temperature and dust accumulation on the performance of solar panels. In case of shading, power-voltage curve shows maximum power of shaded PV module decreases when irradiance level is reduced. Dust deposition shows adverse effects and a drop of 21.7% is observed in the month of June. Temperature seriously affects the output of solar panels when it goes beyond 40°C. It is concluded in the end that these factors can easily be dealt by simple care to extract maximum efficiency of the solar system.