SOLAR PANEL CLEANING ROBOT

Abstract

The design and development of a solar panel cleaning system is becoming popular nowadays. The main objective of this design is to clean the solar panel using an electrical mechanism, such that the efficiency or quality of the solar panel is not compromised. As a matter of fact, the gulf region - especially Saudi Arabia- is facing a lot of dust storms so the solar panels need to be cleaned frequently. If the task is performed manually, it will be very costly and time- consuming. A special wiping material shall be used in the conceived mechanism design to ensure the quality of cleaning. This project is about the design and development of a solar panel cleaning bot. Also, if the solar panels are made to be cleaned in a repeated cycle in an automated manner, there comes a situation where these panels will be cleaned even when there is no dust which leads to waste of power. So, this proposed system cleans the panel only when the dust is detected using image processing technique. The main advantage of this solar panel cleaning system is that it operates automatically and remotely in order to maintain high power generation efficiency. Key Words: Solar panel, cleaning system, dust detection, solar panel cleaning bot, image processing.