Self-Powered Dust Removal System for Solar Panels Driven by a Rotary Freestanding-Electret Generator

As an important renewable energy, solar power generation is faced with the issue that dust accumulation will block the sunlight and reduce power efficiency. This paper reports a self-power dust removal system for solar panels, based on dielectric electrophoresis driven by a rotary freestanding electret generator that harvests wind energy. The system directly uses the output electrode of the solar panel as one of the electrodes of the dust removal unit, and doesn’t affect the output performance of the panel. In a demonstration, two dust removal units can be driven by one generator under the slow wind of 1.6 m/s, and the dust on two solar panels was effectively removed and the output of the panels was recovered to 97% and 98%, respectively.