Cleaning cycle optimization and cost evaluation of module dust for photovoltaic power plants
Cleaning cycle optimization and cost evaluation of module dust for photovoltaic power plants in China Bo Zhao1 · Shuwei Zhang1 · Shengxian Cao1 · Qi Zhao2 Published online: 26 July 2019 Abstract The photovoltaic (PV) power plants installed in the northwest and northeast areas of China have a serious dust pollution problem. In this paper, a model for optimizing the cleaning cycle of module dust and evaluating the cost for the PV power plants in China was proposed by the use of dust deposition monitoring with image recognition and two cleaning technologies. Outdoor experimental results showed that the degradation of power conversion efficiency changed linearly with increasing the image gray value and the dust deposition density had an asymptotic relationship with dust deposition time. Based on the proposed model and corresponding dry and wet cleaning technologies, the optimal cleaning cycles for a PV power plant in northeast China were approximately 10.1 and 22.8 days when the power