Power reduction mechanism of dust-deposited photovoltaic modules: An experimental study

This paper aims to study the relationship between the density of mass, transmittance, and electrical performance through experimental methods, which obtains a suitable index for describing the power loss of photovoltaic modules. It reveals the essence of the influence of dust on power in photovoltaic modules. Through optical and electrical experiments, it is found that transmittance has more explanatory power, because the reflectance decreases by about 1.1% in the range of density of mass from 0 to 10 g/m2. In comparison, the transmittance decreases by about 35.0%. In electrical experiments, it is found that the photoelectric conversion efficiency decreases nearly 7% with the increase of density of mass (0–10 g/m2), and the short-circuit current and maximum power decay exponentially with density of mass of dust-deposited (g/m2). The function of short-circuit current declines with density of mass satisfying I=I0 exp(-0.041m), which is consistent with the expression of the electron-hole generation rate.