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The influence of sand on the performance of CdTe photovoltaic modules of different colours and transparencies

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Abstract

With recent technological advances, more people are moving towards the use of renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. This group includes the photovoltaic technologies that have been improving by leaps and bounds, although they still need a lot of development. Factors as the dust still need further research. In the same vein, this research work investigates the influence of sand, type of dust, and colour on the energy performance of CdTe modules. For this, experimental tests were carried out in the presence of sand and without its presence. In the tests without sand, it was found that the transparency and colour of the modules had an influence on the results, due to their connection with the spotlight irradiation spectrum. In the case of the presence of sand, with various densities, a general decrease in energy assessment parameters was observed with the exception of Fill Factor. For the computational simulation of the implemented 1M5P model, both cases were evaluated, and for the absence of sand, the errors ranged from 9.19 to 11.30%, not being very significant. With sand, the errors varied between 8.87 and 12.09%, but without any tendency with the increase of sand. It can be concluded that the model is representative and serves as an error metric for tests without sand because it was developed for this specific case. However, in the case of the tests with sand, it is no longer representative so, it would be necessary to consider in its development factors such as humidity and temperature.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by FCT/MCTES through national funds and in part by cofounded EU funds under Project UIDB50008/2020. Also, this work was supported by FCT under the research grant UI/BD/151091/2021.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal

    João Guilherme Santos, Ricardo A. Marques Lameirinhas & Carlos A. F. Fernandes

  2. Instituto de Telecomunicações, Av. Rovisco Pais 1, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal

    Ricardo A. Marques Lameirinhas, Carlos A. F. Fernandes & João Paulo N. Torres

  3. Academia Miliar / CINAMIL, Av. Conde Castro Guimarães, Amadora, 2720-113, Lisbon, Portugal

    João Paulo N. Torres

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  1. João Guilherme Santos
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  2. Ricardo A. Marques Lameirinhas
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  3. Carlos A. F. Fernandes
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  4. João Paulo N. Torres
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Contributions

João Santos was responsible to write the original draft, João Torres and Carlos Fernandes are his supervisors; João Torres and Ricardo Lameirinhas analysed the results and they were responsible to review and editing the final manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Ricardo A. Marques Lameirinhas.

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Santos, J.G., Marques Lameirinhas, R.A., Fernandes, C.A.F. et al. The influence of sand on the performance of CdTe photovoltaic modules of different colours and transparencies. Energy Syst (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12667-022-00523-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12667-022-00523-6

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