Artificial soiling of photovoltaic module surfaces using traceable soil components

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.