The last decade was historic for the solar energy sector as the Paris Climate Deal was finally ratified by most countries. The following year the International Solar Alliance came into being and pledged to make rapid strides in solar infrastructure. In an enabling national and international atmosphere, solar energy infrastructure has been nurtured carefully. Yet the solar sector needs much work as infrastructural and cost bottlenecks still remain. The major impediment behind the widespread adoption of solar energy is its affordability. Solar panels are costly as the maintenance costs are huge on account of their delicate infrastructure. This piece of the puzzle is about to be solved with the development of an automatic solar panel cleaning system.
Balancing economic growth and climate stewardship
For rising economies like China and India, infrastructure and manufacturing are necessary to sustain their large population. Urbanisation is part of this process. These countries have made good economic progress in the last three decades. The downside of this increasing economic activity has been its lopsided growth and pressure on urban centres in terms of living space and deteriorating air quality. Powering these large urban centres requires energy and fossil fuel emissions are a by-product of that. The renewable energy sector is growing but not at a speed commensurate with urbanisation. Hence, to match the speed of growing urbanisation, developing countries need to develop clean technological solutions like the automatic solar panel cleaning system to keep carbon emissions and climate change under control.
What are automatic solar panel cleaning services and why is it important?
Automatic solar panel cleaning services have taken the solar sector by surprise with their unique technological features. These are AI robots with suspension wheels that can move over the surface of the panel, cleaning it with the embedded brush. These services hold a huge significance as they provide a remarkable improvement over manual cleaning services.
Here are the features of automatic panel cleaning that are transforming the solar sector one panel at a time.
- Cleaning sans water: The solar panel cleaning robot has a multi-layered brush that is ultra-soft. It is designed in a way to scoop up the dust particles and remove them from the panels. There’s no need to use water to clean the panels. This ultimately increases the panel’s life as there’s no danger of circuit damage due to wet conditions.
- Speed: When cleaning large solar plants, it is necessary to clean them up speedily. The robot has wheels that move swiftly over the panels with up to 2 km/hr. You can get the panels cleaned multiple times in a single day if you want.
- SCADA compliant: The robot can be controlled with voice commands and remote instructions. This makes it easier to plan cleaning operations in advance and keep the panels clean even without human supervision.
- Lightweight: These robots are lightly structured so as to remove the burden of weight on the panels. The stainless steel alloy is incredibly lightweight, giving the automatic solar panel cleaning system its defining feature.
- Automatic tilting: The robot is programmed in such a way that it identifies obstacles and tilts when needed. It also has the ability to resist winds and powers down automatically if needed.
- Preventive Service Call Generation: The AI technology used in the automatic panel cleaning system equips it to check vital health characteristics like battery health and performance and generate maintenance calls in time.
How can the automatic solar panel cleaning system help reduce pollution?
Solar panels mainly consist of photovoltaic cells arranged in a quadrangular module. These PV modules are made of semiconductors that are costly to obtain. These are also delicate in nature and need proper maintenance to function properly. Now imagine if the panel gets damaged. The damage could be due to repeated dust formation on the panel surface or human error like putting undue pressure on the panels. If the PV solar module gets damaged, it would naturally drive up the cost. This is because the panels won’t absorb solar radiation fully and electricity generation would be hampered as a result. Per unit cost of electricity generated by a solar plant would be higher than a fossil fuel source in this case and people would be inclined to switch over to thermal power plants.
On the other hand, if the same panels were to be kept squeaky clean at all times without any inadvertent human errors or negligence, they would perform at their peak capability. The absorption capacity of the panels would remain high throughout the year and the power output and efficiency would increase. When the power output is high and maintenance costs are negligible, people would willingly shift towards solar energy. As more households and industries come under the solar grid, fossil fuel emissions will come down drastically and we’ll head towards a carbon-neutral world.
Key Takeaway
Solar energy has the potential to become mankind’s primary energy source with the right technological solutions. It is humanity’s destiny and responsibility to keep making progress in the solar sector. Fortunately, we now have access to automatic solar panel cleaning services that have brought a paradigm shift in the renewable energy domain.