Investigation of solar photovoltaic performance via cooling-light concentrating and cleaning system using robotic arduino approach

Abstract

This paper proposes two solar photovoltaic (PV) systems; a PV system integrated with multiple fixed concentrating mirrors and cooling system, and a PV system embedded with an improved panel robot cleaning system. The main contribution of the first system is the increasing of irradiance absorption without overheating the PV panel. This can be achieved by placing three mirrors around the solar panel with specific angles and a water hose at the top-end of the panel to allow water running on the surface of the panel in which it is controlled by Arduino program. On the other hand, the main advantage of the second system is the improvement of power output generated by PV panel with the help of simple cleaning robot construction to clean depositions of impurities on the panel's surface. This is done by designing a robot on the PV panel and subsequently creating the circuits to be operated by an Arduino microcontroller. The cleaning robot works based on the amount of voltage received by PV panel from the sunlight. Data Acquisition Interface LVDAC is used to record the output power from PV panel of both systems. The first system shows increment in the output power which indicates that the concentrating mirrors and cooling system proposed is viable to enhance the performance of PV system. For the second system, it is found that there is improvement of about 70% to 80% in the output power of PV panel after cleaning process.