Investigation of Cleaning Methods for Photovoltaic Systems under Kuwait Environment

The accumulation of dust on photovoltaic (PV) systems highly affects the module performance where it can reduce the energy yield up to 32% for tilted modules and 82% for flat installed modules. The energy losses can be minimized by the frequent cleaning of the PV module, although the cost associated with cleaning can offset the cost of energy gained from cleaning. Therefore, this proposal investigates different cleaning methods and procedures for PV modules installed in Kuwait by means of outdoor experiment and modeling to derive the cost optimization for all tested cleaning methods. This will also include developing an automatic PV array cleaning machine. The effectiveness and cost associated with each cleaning method will be recorded and analyzed. A cost analysis will be carried out with the optimized cleaning procedure using the specific yield calculated from IEC 60891 :2009 procedure 2 and then correcting it with a dust correction model. This will produce the predicted cost of each cleaning procedure with regard to the PV system yield

optimized to the cost of the specific cleaning procedure.
The expected cost for this project is KD124,500.00 (one hundred twenty seven thousands and two hundred
Kuwaiti Dinars only), and the project is to be completed in a period of 24 m.