A dirty, dusty solar panel doesn’t perform to its full potential. Here’s another robotic device for cleaning modules – SolarBrush.
While most solar panels have dust repelling properties; a small decrease in efficiency can be particularly noticeable in a large solar farm; especially in areas with little rainfall to wash the dust off.
Any performance degradation can translate to substantial financial loss and facilities in particularly dry and dusty areas usually employ cleaning teams. This is expensive, so robotics will play an increasingly important role in lowering the cost of solar farm maintenance in the future.
Under development since the late 90’s, SolarBrush can clean a string of panels by brushing dust and sand off modules into the mounting space in between. The 2.5kg robot detects the end of the modules and “steps” over the frame onto the next module (maximum gap distance of 30 mm).
The robot, which can work on steep inclines, is powered by a rechargeable battery and can cover 1 m² / minute.
SolarBrush inventor Ridha Azaiz started research on solar power back in 1997 while monitoring a school project. Noticing a decline in efficiency as panels became dusty, Ridha began working on the idea of an autonomous cleaning robot for solar modules.
Ridha will be taking the SolarBrush to San Francisco where he will demonstrate the robot during the Clean Tech Forum and meet with potential investors. Ridha believes that when produced in commercial quantities, each SolarBrush will cost around $3,000.
Solar panel cleaning will become a lucrative industry in the years ahead and other robotic devices are being developed, such as Momo.
Traditional modules aren’t the only solar tech to experience degraded performance in dusty conditions – concentrated solar power plants face the same challenges.
The recently commissioned Shams 1 solar farm in the UAE is also using robotics for cleaning; in the form of robot arms attached to trucks that clean the 258,048 mirrors at the plant.
