Impact of carbon dust particle deposition and partial shadow of PV array

Settlement of dust whether it is mud, sand or carbon dust in PV array of PV power plant is a natural occurrences. There are studies that show that the accumulated dust can reduce performance of solar panels output power. Since the capital cost of PV system is quite high, a drop in the efficiency of PV array is not desirable though the PV power output is always unpredictable due to the randomness nature of irradiance. Experiment on carbon dust settlement on PV array is performed and its impact on output power is studied. It is found that carbon dust can reduce the system efficiency more than the partial shadow effect.