An Automated Solar Panels Monitoring and Cleaning System: A Case Study of Kaduna Polytechnic, Nigeria.

Abstract

The use of Photo Voltaic (PV) panels for the generation of electricity has received a lot of attention from both industries and academia as a renewable energy source due to inadequate electricity from the grid, its low cost as well as environmental benefits. However, the ef?ciency of solar panels can be signi?cantly affected by major issues such as the accumulation of dust or dirt particles on their surfaces. Therefore, this study presents the design and construction of an automatic based PV monitoring and cleaning system. The system comprises electromechanical parts such as microcontroller, servo motor, submersible pump, voltage sensor, Light Dependent Resistor (LDR) sensor and metal frame. In addition, a modified Blynk application was integrated with the system to remotely monitor and control the performance of the panels. Several tests were carried out by using 150Watts panel installed in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Kaduna Polytechnic. The experimental results obtained shows that the output power of the panel decreases as the dust or dirt particles increases. However, the performance of the panel improved when the cleaning process was carried using the proposed methodology in terms of output voltage, current, and power levels with a value of 13.76%, 17.46%, and 33.61% respectively.