Technical and economic study of the sand and dust accumulation impact on the energy performance of photovoltaic system in Algerian Sahara

Nordine Sahouane, Abderrezzaq Ziane, Rachid Dabou, Ammar Neçaibia, Abdelkrim Rouabhia, Salah Lachtar, Mohammed Blal, Abdeldjalil Slimani and Tidjar Boudjamaa

Renewable Energy, 2023, vol. 205, issue C, 142-155

Abstract: In this work, experimental studies were carried out to study in detail the impact of sand and dust on the electrical performance of photovoltaic modules in the Adrar region. For this, a comparison between two identical photovoltaic systems of 7 kWp each (PV17 and PV67) was carried out, the PV17 is cleaned regularly and the PV67 is cleaned infrequently. The experiment results reveal a significant impact of sand and dust accumulation on the electrical performance of the systems. The energy losses just after exposure to sandstorms are 7.37 kWh (1.45% of total production in 07 days of operation and two days of sandstorms), for dust accumulation they are 2.2 kWh, 3.2 kWh, 5.13 kWh, and 4 kWh after 6, 11, 18 and 23 days of operation respectively. The results show that cleaning PV systems immediately after sandstorm days can significantly reduce energy losses. For dust accumulation works, cleaning once every 20 days allows the PV systems to have energy reduction by 1.60%. The economic study carried out in this work shows that PV systems cleaning in the Adrar region is financially profitable with capacities greater than 20 kWp and energy gain greater than 2.74 kWh.

Keywords: Photovoltaic systems; Dust accumulation; Sandstorms; Energy efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148123000435
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:205:y:2023:i:c:p:142-155

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2023.01.033

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().