Automated Solar Panel Cleaning System

The Project

Our sun is the source of all life on Earth, making solar energy useful to us in many different ways. Solar Panel is used on the rooftops of homes, businesses, in farming, in industries and many more areas due to its environmental and financial benefits. Solar panels work by converting light into electricity. If there is dirt on the surface of the solar panel, it can reduce how much light is absorbed by that area, reducing efficiency. Cleaning solar panels reduce dust, debris, and other contaminants such as leaves and bugs etc. preventing reduction in efficiency. Cleaning solar panels is a skill in itself and at most places solar panel are cleaned manually. Cleaning of Solar Panel manually has lots of disadvantages such as it is assembled at a height and is difficult to reach, it takes several hours to complete and the biggest disadvantage is when people clean solar panels there is a very big risk of accidents especially when the panels are installed on a roof or at a certain height. This Solar Panel Cleaning System cleans the solar panels in an automated way. This project describes the prototype designed for cleaning of dirty solar panels. The Solar Panel cleaning system uses Lego Mindstorm EV3, that combines machine building and programming, which fully automates the whole system and can clean the solar panels with a click of a button from the comfort of our home. **The Automatic Solar Panel cleaning system will be using the following method: First to start the system we will run the program in the laptop which will trigger the EV3 brick to send a signal to the motor in the switch box to turn on the switch attached to the submersible water pump. The water will pass through the rubber pipe and start dropping on the solar panel via the pvc pipe which is attached to it. In the next step the NXT motor will start rotating the 32 module axle with attached micro-fiber cloth to clean the solar panel. This proposed cleaning system is based on two steps mechanism where first it cleans the solar panel with water and then with a micro-fiber cloth. This feature ensures complete safety as the panel is cleaned automatically and efficiently with a click of a button. Also any type of scratch is not seen during the experimental tests. Experimentally the cleaning system is capable of serving its purpose and cleans the solar panel efficiently.

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Team Comments

I made this project to automate the whole system of cleaning dirty solar panels with a click of a button from the comfort of our home.

I faced difficulty in doing Research on why the solar Panels were so dirty and not being cleaned. I worked it out by speaking to people in the neighborhood who had solar panels installed on their rooftops.

If I had more time and resources I would have tried to implement this prototype on some of the actual sites in my neighborhood.