Journal Article

Investigation of Effects of Dust on the Performance Photo- Voltaic Modules in the North Western Nigeria

Abstract

This paper investigated the effect of dust accumulation on the efficiency of Photovoltaic (PV) modules experimentally. For this purpose, two identical PV modules were installed and studies were conducted at the testing ground of Sokoto Energy Research Centre, Usmanu Danfodiyo University Sokoto (Nigeria). This study covers measurements done in winter months of January, October, November and December for the period of three years (2016 - 2018). The generated data were pre-processed and utilized to generate I-V and P-V characteristic curves; the curves generated for the PV module were found to compare satisfactorily well with those obtained from existing conventional PV model. The results obtained show the maximum PV efficiency achieved by dusty and clean module are 73.49% and 85.76% respectively, all in the month of October 2016. While the minimum PV efficiency achieved by dusty and clean module are 48.34% and 51.23% respectively, all in the month of January and December respectively. It is therefore evident that the dust deposition on PV module could cause significant losses in PV output power generation

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