Design and Indoor Validation of 'DUSST': A Novel Low-Maintenance Soiling Station

Soiling can cause significant losses to photovoltaic systems, and therefore it has to be carefully monitored. Currently, the most common soiling monitoring technologies are soiling stations that use the electrical outputs of a regularly cleaned PV device and of a naturally soiled PV device to quantify soiling. A new class of low-maintenance soiling stations has now been launched in the market to lower the cost and increase the reliability of soiling monitoring. In this work, the design, and the indoor validation of 'DUSST' (Detector Unit for Soiling Spectral Transmittance), a new low-maintenance soiling station, are presented. DUSST projects a collimated monochromatic light through a glass surface and on to a light detector to measure the intensity of the transmitted light. As the glass surface naturally soils, the losses are quantified by comparing this soiled reading with a calibrated reading in the baseline clean condition.