Indoor and Outdoor Test Results for 'DUSST', a Low-Cost, Low-Maintenance PV Soiling Sensor

Conference · Thu Feb 06 04:00:00 EST 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1109/PVSC40753.2019.8981225· OSTI ID:1603898

Muller, Matthew ^[1]; Morse, Joshua ^[1]; Almonacid, Florencia ^[2]; Fernandez, Eduardo F. ^[2]; Micheli, Leonardo ^[2]

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1. National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
2. University of Jaen

Soiling can cause significant losses to photovoltaic systems, and therefore it is often measured for the purposes of predicting long-term energy forecasts or for monitoring real time performance and triggering maintenance events as needed. Currently, the most common soiling monitoring technologies are soiling stations that use the electrical outputs of a regularly cleaned PV device and of a naturally soiled PV device to quantify soiling. As part of a new class of low-cost and low-maintenance soiling stations NREL has previously presented 'DUSST'. DUSST projects a collimated monochromatic light source through a glass surface (exposed similarly to the PV modules that need to be monitored) and on to a light detector to measure the intensity of the transmitted light. As the glass surface naturally soils, the losses are quantified by comparing this soiled reading with a calibrated reading under baseline clean condition. This work presents the ongoing improvement of DUSST and the ongoing indoor and outdoor validation of this new soiling sensor.

• Research Organization: National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)
• DOE Contract Number: AC36-08GO28308
• OSTI ID: 1603898
• Report Number(s): NREL/CP-5K00-73204
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
42 ENGINEERING
dust
optical sensor
photovoltaic device
soiling sensors