Automatic Solar Panel Cleaner

It is well known that in future our earth will be threatened by drastic climate change and global warming. Therefore, it is important to find sustainable solutions to fulfill the energy requirements for our present and coming generations. Increasing the use of renewable and non-polluting energy sources to generate electricity is a good solution to this problem. Generating electricity using solar panel is a non-polluting source. The solar PV modules which are located more in dusty environments as in the case of tropical countries like India, the chance for accumulation of dust on the surface of the solar panel is very high [1]–[2]. For maintaining maximum efficiency in power generation, solar panels need to be cleaned periodically. In many stations, the cleaning is done manually. In some areas, PV modules which are mounted on roof tops in a clustered fashion may not be easily accessible for manual cleaning. So, this project is about the design and development of an automatic cleaner on the solar panel which checks whether the dust is accumulated on solar panel or not. If it finds any dirt, then it will automatically clean the dirt without any manual intervention that would travel lengthwise along the solar panel. We have designed and developed a cleaning system that will improve the efficiency of the solar panel. It is an environmental-friendly system which involves recycling of water that was used for cleaning the solar panels.