Effects of Natural Dust on the Performance of PV Panels in Bangladesh

Energy is considered a prime agent in the generation of wealth and a significant factor in economic development. Limited fossil resources and environmental problems associated with them have emphasized the need for new sustainable energy supply options that use renewable energies. Among available technologies for energy production from solar source, photovoltaic system could give a significant contribution to develop a more sustainable energy system. Solar Panel has its wide use starting from a simple 5W diode lamp to a few kW ac drives. A solar panel with a battery and a charge controller and other auxiliary devices like dc to ac converters constitute a Solar Home System (SHS).Solar home system (SHS) is becoming popular day by day and even poor households are now becoming interested to purchase solar home system due to its various advantages. Solar home systems (SHS) have a major problem that is low efficiency. It also decreases output day by day because of improper maintenances, effect of dust and shadow. Accumulation of dust on solar panel of solar photovoltaic (PV) system is a natural process. It was found from the study that the accumulated dust on the surface of photovoltaic solar panel can reduce the system’s efficiency by up to 35% in one month .In this paper we show that the effect of dust accumulation on the solar panel naturally and how it is possible to overcome this problem.