Development of solar panel cleaning

robot using Arduino

Ahmed Awad Abdullah 209512

Ahmed Nasser ALsaeedi 199009
Students of the Department of Mechatronics and Industrial Engineering -
Faculty of Engineering - University of Aden

ABSTRACT
Solar power is mainly harnessed from photovoltaic (PV) panels which are
arranged in multiple arrays in a solar farm or solar system. Though,
power generation from PV solar system is characterised by uncertain
efficiency, many countries with high insolation prefer solar as an
alternative way of generating clean energy. However, the efficiency of
energy generated from PV panels is affected by the accumulation of dust
and debris, even on one panel in an array. This condition leads to the
need for regular cleaning of the surface of PV panels. Current labour-
based cleaning methods for photovoltaic arrays are costly in time, water
and energy usage as well as lacking in automation capabilities. To
overcome this problem, a fully automatic solar panel cleaning system
with/without water is proposed. Hence, in this paper, the design of a
robot for automated cleaning of the surface of PV panel is presented.
The design utilizes an Arduino controller system to control the robot
movement during the cleaning process. In addition, it is equipped with
two rough sponge and a water pump system that can be used to clean
dust or debris found on PV panel surfaces. The efficiency of the PV
panels before and after the cleaning process is also observed. The result
shows that the developed solar panel cleaning robot is able to clean the
panel effectively and increase back the output current as well as the
maximum power of the panel by 50%, after the dust on the PV panel is
cleaned.
1. INTRODUCTION
This new century is marked by growth in the usage of PV, both in
research and market proliferation. Renewable energies, especially
photovoltaics (PV) are regarded as an important contribution for
decarbonization of our energy system.
However, areas with high levels of irradiation (the Sun-Belt region) often
suffer from high dust and limited water resources. The deposition of
dust and dirt on a PV module or mirror surface leads to power loss as it
reduces the solar energy received by the collector by absorbing or
dispersing the sunlight. Other than that, the efficiency of solar panels
decreases with time, added by other factors such as fallen leaves and
patches of water. Therefore, many efforts have been made to optimize
cleaning strategies, including wet or dry cleaning methods, automatic or
manual cleaning methods, different types of brushes or fabrics, or
chemical additives. Besides the cleaning mechanism, another dust
mitigation strategy is to use natural cleaning mechanisms such as wind
and rain. In areas with low rainfall and high humidity, such as dry and
semi-arid climates, dust removal by wind can be used as a natural
cleansing mechanism.

As mentioned earlier, there are several factors affecting PV energy

efficiencies, such as bird droppings, sea salt, shadows, pollen, dust,
snow, high temperatures, and dirt. However, the main factor affecting
the efficiency of the PV panel is dust, which can reduce its efficiency by
up to 50%, depending on the surrounding environment. Numerous
works have been conducted around the globe for solar panel automatic
self-cleaning. For instance, has introduced a „solar panel cleaning robot‟
that clean PV array. With a dimension range between 1 to 16 meters,
the 12 V powered robot cleans the PV panel arrays by moving its
vertically installed cleaning brush in the horizontal axis. At the same
time, water from an attached hose is supplied to wet a panel
automatically during cleaning. This feature is fully autonomous with
double stage programme functioning through a water jet and a rain
sensor. Two ways communication and control from remote sites are
possible with the installation of text massaging system between users
and the robot.

found that Yemen often carries dust and sand from February to May.
The small particles from the sand and dust accumulate on the PV panel
surface and block the sunlight from reaching the modules. Due to this
problem, a solution to clean the energy resources in the desert region is
proposed. The experimental set up on weekly cleaning on PV panel
throughout the period and simultaneous measuring is implemented in
maximum operating voltage and currents on each module before and
after washing modules.

This research aims to construct a solar panel cleaning robot using

Arduino. The objectives of the project are to design and implement a
microcontroller-based dust cleaning system by using Arduino UNO as the
main system, to optimise the performance of PV panel operation under
dusty environment, and to improve the efficiency of the solar panel by
keeping them clean.

2. SYSTEM DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT

2.1. System overview
The proposed solar panel cleaning robot consists of:
a microcontroller unit, battery, ultrasonic sensor, two-wheel-drive (WD)
car chassis with DC motor, water pump, water tank, and brushes. The
major heart of this project is the microcontroller unit.
The microcontroller unit controls the movement of the DC motor based
on the input given by the ultrasonic sensor. It also determines the time
to pump water to the brushes during the cleaning process. In this
system, an ultrasonic sensor detects the movement distance of the
proposed robot. The built-in cleaning device in the robot consists of
static brushes, placed at the front and the backside of the robot, a water
pump, and a water tank. Water is supplied to the brushes from the
water tanks via a dedicated water pump, whose function is to pump the
water at a suitable pressure. The list of hardware used in the
development of the proposed prototype is given in Table 1

Table 1. List of hardware

No Component Description
1 Arduino UNO R3 To control the overall cleaning process of the robot
2 Motor Driver L293D Embedded with Arduino UNO to connect the DC motor
3 2WD chassis car with 2DC The body of the robot, holds the ultrasonic sensor,
motors rechargeable battery, microcontroller unit, and brushes.
4 Ultrasonic sensor To measure the distance movement of the robot
5 Rechargeable battery To supply power to the microcontroller unit and water pump
6 Water pump To pump water from the water tank to the brushes
7 Solar panel -
8 Solar charge controller To recharge the battery
9 Brushes To clean the dust on solar panel

2.2. Complete hardware

When the switch is on, the robot moves forward with a speed of 100
rpm. The ultrasonic sensor is also turned on and starts to read the
movement distance of the robot. If the movement distance of the robot
is less than 5 cm, the robot continues to move forward. When the
movement distance of the robot is farther than 5cm, then the robot
starts to move backward. The robot stops moving backward after the
time delay set in the microcontroller reaches 1000ms. Then it moves
forward in a straight line again. This process is repeated until the robot is
turned off. Since this robot was tested on a small solar panel, it was
coded to move in a straight line, forward and backward. If the system is
tested on a bigger array of solar panels, the robot movement can be
coded as per proper walking path so that it can clean all the solar panels
efficiently.

3. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a fully assembled solar panel cleaning robot has been
developed. The control algorithm and cleaning sequence are established
with the Arduino platform. The robot is designed to be fully powered by
rechargeable batteries. The experiment and verification results
demonstrated the functionality of the cleaning robot to performed its
duty. The solar photovoltaic output power is successfully restored to its
maximum power capacity after the cleaning process, even though there
are slight losses due to some glitch error in the system. The 50%
improvement at the output current as well as the maximum power before
and after cleaning reveal that the robot guarantees the effectiveness of the
developed robot.