Distribution and effect of soiling on photovoltaic power plants

Today, as the damages of fossil fuels to the world are clearly revealed, investment and research budgets for renewable energy sources have increased tremendously. Considering that fossil fuels will end in a distant future, it is not difficult to imagine that most of the energy that people needed can be obtained from renewable energy sources. Solar energy will play a big role at meeting the needed energy as a renewable energy source. In this thesis, it is aimed to calculate the amount of loss due to soiling and soiling distribution in a power plant producing electricity by using photovoltaic technology. Besides, the cleaning costs that will arise due to the values obtained and the situations that may be encountered after cleaning are examined. For the thesis, a system with a field and roof application of approximately 14 MWe in Mersin was examined. Production and meteorological data collected within the scope of the thesis were collected over a period of 12 months. Reliable data has been obtained thanks to the high sensitivity, data collection and recording elements installed in the plant. By comparing the obtained data, the effect of soiling effect on the performance ratio was revealed. This study shows us, at the field side of the plant which has 10 MWe capacity, soiling losses occurred approximately 702,857.05 kWh (3.9 % of total energy generation). Data's revealed that in some months cleaning of the photovoltaic modules, won't compensate the cost of cleaning. On an average, the power plants that can be installed in this region and the effect of pollination effect on performance have been determined by the relevant case study.