What would be the best sensors for dust detection and measurement on PV panle, it should be off teh shelf and small sensosr that can be installed on teh PV panels corner.
There are some commercially available sensors such for those PM10 class dust particles that work on the principle of opto-electronics. Give a try and you should be able to find one that suits your requirement.
Best luck!
-PRASANNA WAICHAL
Mohamed,
As Prasanna indicated there are many such sensors.
May I suggest that rather than install a new sensor which relies on dust deposition to obscure a signal, you instead use the very PV surface that you are using to raise power?
(why clean two things?)
Direct a low power laser diode at a PV panel, and catch the reflected ray in a simple photodiode. Calibrate the measured diode voltage as a function of dust load, and you have a relatively reliable measure of the areal coating (combined with albedo - admittedly).
Or direct the laser diode perpendicularly to the panel - and have an off-axis photodiode pick up the scattered light. Rely on Mie scattering.
Cost, less than a dollar per sensor - all parts COTS - you might need to fabricate the bracket yourself to orient the diode/photodiode precisely.
Oh, and a month or so of fun calibrating it.
James,
Thanks for your comments. Indeed I appreciate your idea of using a photodiode to sense a reflected light off the PV surface rather than using the dust sensors which will only indicate the amount of dust in the air or atmosphere and not on the PV surface.
Offcouse, a proper calibration will be needed to correlate the dust density and rate of fall of power output from the PV panel.
Prasanna,
I'm tempted to go for the scattering method - perpendicular laser diode, and a photodiode to one side. A little bracket, perhaps a beam splitter and a second photodiode to independently sense the illuminating beam (to account for aging, dirt on the laser diode window, etc.)
The problem will be finding an optimal scattering angle for a given wavelength. An interesting challenge - what's the available budget per sensor?
James;
many thanksfor your Idea ,I will propose it tomy Masterstudents to design the sensor moduel then as you mentiened it needs to be calibrated.
It will be part of the student final project. then we can think how to imlement a fuzzy controller within the microcontroller.
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