Charge Measurement of Dust Particles on Photovoltaic Module

Photovoltaic (PV) systems are one of the most promising renewable energy sources in the world, and hence it is important to explore the factors that affect the working / operational efficiency of this source. Many factors can affect the efficiency of the solar cells such as: dust accumulation on the surface of the arrays; cell material; shading; tilt angle of the cells; orientation of the PV modules and cell temperatures. This research is focused on the analyzing the effect of charged dust particles on the PV module performance. A number of studies have demonstrated the effect of dust accumulation on the PV modules' performance. But the relation between the amounts of charge of the dust particles and the PV module performance is still not well investigated. In this work, various experiments have been conducted to investigate the relation between the amount of charge on dust particles and their impact on percentage reduction of the PV module's output voltage. Accumulations of dust particles on PV module are dependent on the charge level of dust particles and the accumulations are not very much related to the tilt angle. The experimental results have shown that the charged particles have significant impact on PV module's output voltage.