Effect of self-cleaning coatings on solar module reflectance and power

Abstract

: The pollution caused power loss of solar modules can be reduced by using self-cleaning coatings. When applying these coatings, the basic question is how the coating itself effects on the power of the solar module. The recent paper deal with this. It examines power, reflection capability and power changes due to contamination and self-cleaning of 5 different coated solar modules and compares them with the measured values of an uncoated solar module. Based on the results of laboratory measurements, it can be stated that the effects of photocatalytic thin layer and lotus effect based coatings increase the power of the solar modules by average 2%. The effects of the same contamination reduced the power of all modules, but the power of the coated modules is higher. After spraying with rainwater, the examined coated solar modules operated at nearly 4% more power than the reference, uncoated solar module.