An experimental investigation of dust buildup on solar photovoltaic modules

Solar photovoltaic (PV) modules are essential for producing electricity with little maintenance and development expenditures. The power generation and operational performance are degraded when dust gathers on the PV module’s surface. In the current study, the heating season was used to evaluate the amount of dust that had accumulated on the PV front cover glass. The research was done in Tirupati, India, to examine how airborne dust particles changed over time on PV modules. Over the course of five weeks throughout the heating season, dust that had accumulated on identical PV modules over varying exposure times was collected. The details of the photovoltaic modules and a summary of the meteorological data are discussed in this paper. The result shows that the average particle deposition density and dust accumulation rate for the heating season varies from 26.92 to 42.53 mg m−2 and 3.48 to 6.07 mg m−2, respectively. The elemental analysis reveals that the majority of the dust sample’s composition is made up of C, O, and Si components, with Br and Tm components found at trace levels.