Investigation of effects of acoustic waves on photovoltaic solar panels

Cleaning of panel surfaces is one of the substantial factors that decrease energy generation efficiency of Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels. The dust and spoiling materials, which is transported in air, can gather on panel surfaces and reduce energy generation efficiency by decreasing transparency of the surfaces. The cleaning of panel surfaces, which spreads hundreds of square meter area, becomes an important issue in application. Several methods have been proposed to enable effective cleaning of panel surfaces with lesser hardware and power consumption requirements. In this study, contributions of surface acoustic waves, which can propagate surfaces of solids, to panel surface cleaning have been investigated. For this purpose, physical mechanisms, which play role in detachment process of particles residing on the panel surface, were considered theoretically. The analyses, given for detachment of micron level particles by Kolomenskii et al., are generalized by extending to macroscopic scales. By using these analyses, detachment conditions of dust particles, which depend on particle size and panel surface angle, have been obtained. Effects of theoretical findings were observed in experimental studies, which were conducted by developed experimental setup. According to results of theoretical and experimental studies, curcimsatances that acoustic surface waves are effective in PV panel surface cleaning, and the shortcomings of the method are discussed. Keywords: Acoustic cleaning, acoustic surface waves, surface cleaning of PV solar panels, particle detachment process