Friday, January 31, 2014: Soiling is one of the main reasons that compromises the efficiency of solar power plants. The accumulation of dust on the surface of solar panels can reduce the reflectivity of the panel to almost 50 per cent in just a few days. However, these ‘self-cleaning’ solar panels will boost performance and reduce costs: making solar power as effective an alternative as it’s meant to be!
Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed a viable ‘fix’ for spoiling. It must be noted that most of the solar power plants have manual cleaners that clean and brush with deionised water and detergent. However, this labour-intensive routine significantly raises operating and maintenance costsm leading to obvious elevated cost of power generation. Researchers at ORNL have developed cost-effective, transparent and anti-soiling coats based on superhydrophobic coating technology for solar panels. The same is capable of rejecting water and other unwanted liquid, dust particles and sand that try to settle on the surface of the solar panel without the need for manual cleaning.
The major advantage of the technique is that the coatings can be deployed on solar panels that are already functional without taking them out for maintainence. The coats are deployed using regular painting or spraying techniques. Further, the team at ORNL has succeeded in successfully meeting with the challenges the technique would normally face: their coatings are excellent water repellents that minimise the need of frequent cleaning. The coatings are only a few nanometres thick and do not interefere with the scattering of light in 250-3000 nm wavelengths. Also, they can effectively tolerate the constant UV exposure and erosion due to sand.
