Dust impact on electrical and thermal photovoltaic performance: Insights from field and laboratory experiments
Abubaker Younis, Abdelkader Rjafallah, Petru Adrian Cotfas, Daniel Tudor Cotfas
Abstract
This study investigated the impact of dust samples from Romania on small-scale silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) devices through field and laboratory experiments. Nonhomogeneous layers of natural dust were intentionally applied to the surfaces of three crystalline and amorphous silicon mini units, with dust film depth measured using an ultrasonic coating thickness gauge. Indoor testing employed a Xenon solar simulator. Key findings reveal significant deterioration in PV electrical characteristics, with maximum losses of 45.35% and 38.14% in maximum power and short-circuit current under outdoor conditions. Indoors, maximum losses were 32.02% and 33.38% for the same parameters. Temperature increases were a maximum of 2.3 °C outdoors and 0.9 °C indoors at the back surface and 3.7 °C and 1.3 °C at the front surface, respectively. The back surface proved to be a better thermal representative due to lower randomness in measured temperature values. Field experiments demonstrated greater reliability than laboratory ones despite using professional equipment. The lack of standardized indoor testing practices is believed to contribute to this discrepancy. The significance of this study lies in updating the literature with experimental studies simulating a relatively extreme condition involving dust thickness densities of 0.01936 and 0.02287 µm mm−2. This scenario is not precluded from occurring in Europe with the escalating impacts of climate change.