Dust mitigation on PV modules in western Saudi Arabia

Sunny desert regions, for example those in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), are regarded areas with huge solar energy potential. Under the prevailing conditions, dirt particles adhering to the module surface, called "soiling", cause substantial losses in PV yield. This effect strongly depends on the specific climatic and environmental conditions around individual locations. To estimate the service operation and life of PV modules, an understanding of the interactions between sand and dirt particles and module surfaces is paramount. We concentrate our effort on climatic modeling (based on GIS) to create soiling risk maps and the analysis of present and deposited dust. This work implicates that realistic soiling tests can help to qualify counteracting measures against soiling e.g. the new concepts of functional anti-soiling coatings.