A Novel Technique for Detecting and Monitoring Dust and Soil on Solar Photovoltaic Panel

Over the past few decades, there has been an increase in energy demand and in carbon dioxide emissions. Electric energy generated using non-renewable resources, such as gas and coal, has been steadily declining. Renewable energy resources are natural, abundant and do not deplete on a human's timescale, such energy resources are economically attractive with zero or very low carbon emissions. On the other hand, harsh environment and weather conditions affect the efficiency of renewable energy resources and systems. For example, soil and dust accumulation on photovoltaic panels reduce the power generated by photovoltaic (PV) panels. This paper presents a computer vision based approach to detect soil and dust on PV surface. The results obtained in this work have experimentally demonstrated that the proposed system produces high recognition rates. The proposed novel method lends itself to easy implementation, which will lead to a more effective and efficient automatic cleaning technique for photovoltaic panels.