A new solar energy converting system with vertical photovoltaic panels

A major problem of solar panels is the soiling of the surface caused by environmental factors (dust, snow). Cleaning (periodic maintenance) using different cleaning techniques is expensive and sometimes are limited by the fragility of the solar panels systems. There was an intense research concerning the cleaning methods of the solar panels, such as mechanic, ultrasonic and electrostatic methods, but they jeopardize the integrity of the solar panels. In order to remove the active substrate of the solar cells from the cleaning system, a new design of the solar panel has been developed. The new system proposed in this paper uses two vertical solar panels sided mounted along a forty five geometrical degrees mirror prism. The light coming from the sun is reflected horizontally, perpendicular, due to the prism to the photovoltaic panels.