A new proposed method to mitigate the soiling rate of a photovoltaic array using first-row height

The photovoltaic soiling phenomena may cause significant energy losses. Therefore, the adoption of an effective mitigation strategy can help improve both optical performance and overall efficiency. The current research numerically investigates and proposes a new method for mitigating the effects of soiling on a photovoltaic array. The approach consists of reducing the soiling rate based on the first row’s height. The evaluation of this study requires first an analysis of the shading effect so that the efficiency is not affected, and then a numerical investigation of the soiling particles’ behavior. In the latter, the computational fluid dynamics method was used to predict the wind flow fields as well as the dust behavior. The Shear Stress Transport κ−ω turbulence and discrete particle models were employed. The results have indicated that the new mitigation method is promising for reducing the frequency of cleaning. The soiling rate can be reduced to a ratio of 30% for the entire array when the effect of gravity is not taken into account. When considering the gravitational force, the new mitigation method did not marginally reduce the soiling rate of the PV array, which can be explained by the following: When each PV row was considered separately, the soiling rate of the last four rows was reduced with a high rate, although the increase in soiling of the first array implies that the soiling rate of the overall PV array is not strongly attenuated.