Monitoring of Solar Panels for Dust
Dirty solar panels can lead to a reduction in performance of up to 25% as well as potentially causing hot spots that damage cells. Senseca has introduced their Dust Fall Monitoring System (MDFS) which is designed to alert control centre operators at photovoltaic solar farms and other commercial developments utilising solar panels to the fact that their panels need to be cleaned.
“The MDFS system is easily added to the solar panel control system. It compares the radiation collected by two-compensated reference cells with outputs either in voltage (Model MDFS2) or Modbus protocol (Model MDFS2-S). One cell (Clean Cell) must always be kept clean, while the other (Dirty Cell) is cleaned together with the PV panels,“ explains Jan Grobler, Managing Director of Senseca SA.
“The device enables a quick identification of dirty solar panels and is compact, lightweight and easy to install on existing systems,“ he adds.
Two ways
The MDFS can be used in two ways:
Basic mode: when manually comparing the Clean and Dirty cell readings, the operator can decide when cleaning is needed. In this mode, the Control Box is not required.
Advanced mode: with the optional Control Box, the system automatically calculates the soiling attenuation rate (%) of the PV panels. This value can be used directly to decide if cleaning is necessary while providing confirmation that cleaning and other maintenance tasks have been performed.
The MDFS system provides five data channels: sun elevation, clean solar cell rad, dirty solar cell rad, MDFS status and attenuation. Both the MDFS2 and MDFS2-S offer a measurement range of 0 to 1400 W/m² , operating temperatures of -20°C to +60°C and warning, pairing instruction via digital outputs, while the MDFS2 offers a measurement error of +- 2.1% the MDFS2-S offers a +- 2.2% measurement error.
Recorded
The Data Acquisition System (DAS) model Meteodata-4000 collects the solar radiation gathered by the lean Reference Cell and the Dirty Reference Cell and additional information regarding tasks performed at the field sensed by the Control Box.
This is all utilised in the calculation of attenuation due to soiling. The data collected by the DAS is recorded in a SQL Server installed in a Data Collection Centre where it is accessible for display and export to Excel files.
