Data Analysis for Supporting Cleaning Schedule of Photovoltaic Power Plants

Abstract

To reduce the extent of dependence on nuclear power and thermal power, the government in Taiwan has aggressively promoted the use of green energy such as solar power and wind power in recent years. Solar energy has in fact become an indispensable part in human daily life in Taiwan. One critical issue in photovoltaic (PV) power plant operation is to determine when to clean dirty solar panels caused by dust or other pollutants. Overly frequent cleaning can lead to excessive cleaning fee while insufficient cleaning leads to reduced production. With a tropical island-type climate, it rains frequently in Taiwan in some seasons, which results in the cleaning of dirty solar panels, referred to as natural cleaning in contrast to manual cleaning by maintenance personnel. In this chapter, we investigate the panel cleaning issues in Taiwan under uncontrolled, operational configuration. We propose methods to estimate solar power loss due to dust on panels and further estimate the cumulative revenue loss. When the loss exceeds the cleaning fee, manual cleaning is scheduled. The preliminary result demonstrated that the proposed approach is promising.