Effects of Dust Accumulation on the Efficiency of Solar PV Panels in Malaysia

Solar energy is a renewable source of energy and can be found almost anywhere. In Malaysia, individuals or organizations can earn income by selling solar power generated at their premises to Distribution Licensees like Tenaga National Berhad under the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme which is fully governed by the Sustainable Energy Development Authority (SEDA), a Malaysia Government body that manages the sustainable energy development in Malaysia. Solar PV panel on the other hand is used to trap solar energy and convert it to electrical energy. Solar energy is one of the main promising clean energy sources in future as it is environmental friendly and provides cost effective solutions to energy problems. However, dust accumulation on solar panel can reduce the efficiency of solar PV panel system and therefore it would affect the amount of power generated and also the cash flow of the producer of solar power. Many studies conducted in different countries showed that accumulated dust on the collector can reduce the performance of solar panels by up to 65% in duration of 6 months in Egypt. However there has been no study conducted in Malaysia to determine the reduction in performance of solar PV panel due to accumulated dust on the collector panel within the local environment condition. The main objective of this project was to study the nature of dust accumulation on solar PV in Malaysia over period of time and its consequence performance. The study was conducted experimentally on the roof of a building in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Perak, Malaysia. To determine the performance of solar PV panel system, glass dummy panels and PV panels were used for comparison in term of sun radiation and power output generated from PV panel. The nature of dust settlement on the PV panel was studied in order to obtain time-based trend which benefit users in term of maintenance of cleaning the solar panel so that it could sustain optimum power delivery. From the result, it was found that the mass of dust accumulated on the solar PV panel developed very fast at a rate of 0.0217 g/hr, Furthermore, it was estimated that the projected drop in power output in a year in Malaysia was about 6 %. A study on interval of cleaning was done by using optimum profit gain of selling solar energy with maintenance of cleaning time. It was found that solar PV panels in Malaysia should be best cleaned against dust at an interval of 2 months for industrial owners and every month for residential owners in order to earn maximum profit gain of selling solar energy.