Assessment of Atmospheric Water Generation System for Photovoltaic Module Cleaning

The most effective PV cleaning methods involve water-based surface cleaning that incurs tremendous overheads in terms of water supply infrastructure and water use cost. The current article discloses an alternative approach of PV cleaning through an onsite atmospheric water generation (AWG) system by utilizing PV power most efficiently. The AWG design ensured to consume lesser energy to clean than the loss of power due to dusting to justify the effectiveness of the proposed system within the cleaning dusting interval. The proposed AWG system produced 440 ml of water-consuming 0.936 kWh energy in 3 nights with an average relative humidity of 66 % and an ambient temperature of 13 °C. A simple correlation developed to predict the energy produced by the panel during the daytime, the amount of water needed to clean the 300 W panel, and the energy consumed by the AWG system to produce the required amount of water. Employing Al Ain weather data, a 300 W panel produces 2.1 KWh in a day, which can generate 1 liter of water per night through the Peltier system consuming the same amount of energy that is reported enough to clean a PV with the efficient sprinkling system.