How Much Does Dust Affect Solar Panels

We know that dust dirt pollen bird droppings and other debris can negatively affect solar panel efficiency.

How much does dust affect solar panels. Investigated effect of dust on pv performance as function of tilt. One of the reasons for this is dirt. Pv glass and cells. Grit and grime can cut solar panels output by more than 35 in certain areas of the globe a new paper reports.

Dust on pv panels does make a difference but it s not a big enough factor in california to warrant cleaning said felipe mejia the first author on the study and a graduate student in environmental engineering in kleissl s research group at the jacobs school of engineering at uc san diego. Why should i clean my solar panels. Most of the stuff caked on the panels was ordinary dirt and dust. But a small percentage around 8 percent was from.

Dust effect on solar panel increase as the tilt angle of incident increases. After that it is all down hill. As soon as your panels are out in the open in the clean air or not so clean air dust. The day your solar panels are installed is the day you will get the best performance out of them.

Admittedly it is a very shallow hill and it might take over 40 years to get to the bottom but day one is going to be as good as it gets. After cleaning the study s solar panels saw a 50 percent jump in efficiency.