Artificial soiling of photovoltaic module surfaces using traceable soil components

Abstract

Effective evaluation and prediction of photovoltaic performance loss due to soiling requires consistent test methods. Natural grime accumulation is time-consuming and location-specific, and thus does not provide reproducible results across different geographic regions. Therefore, we have demonstrated a technique to apply artificial soiling with NIST-traceable components using an aerosol spray technique. This approach produces consistent soil coatings which were directly correlated to performance loss of multicrystalline Si cells in a laboratory setting. By tailoring the composition of the test blend, termed `standard grime', the loss due to soiling can be effectively predicted over a range of mass loadings and soil types.