Laboratory Investigation on the Impact of Coal Dust Deposition on PVPanel Performance

Abstract

The generation of electric power through solar photovoltaic panel is highly sensitive towards its operating environment. Dust is one of the important operating parameters which affect the performance of photovoltaic panel. The aim of this study is to understand the effect of dust mass deposition on the output power of the solar photovoltaic panel. In order to conduct this study a filed collected coal dust was used in different mass on the surface of photovoltaic panel and its output power was calculated. Further, based on obtaining output power for different mass of coal dust deposition, a mathematical model was developed between panel output power and the amount of coal dust deposit. The developed model has shown a good coefficient of correlation, i.e., 0.94974 and strong negative correlation with the Pearson’s correlation coefficient of -0.97712. The outcome of this study will help to understand the performance of solar photovoltaic panels under the dusty environment.