Regional Soiling Stations for PV: Soling Loss Analysis

The soiling loss factor (SLF) of photovoltaic (PV) modules/system is an interplay between the dust frequency and intensity of the site, rain frequency and intensity of the site, tilt angle and height of the module installation, and wind speed and humidity of the site. The integrated area of the downward peaks of the SLF time series plots for a year provides the annual soiling loss for the system at each tilt angle. Sandia National Laboratories, in collaboration with Arizona State University, installed five regional soiling stations around the country and collected soiling loss data over a year. Four of these soiling stations are located at the U.S. Department of Energy Regional Test Centers (Florida, Albuquerque, Colorado and Vermont), while the fifth station is located at the Arizona State University Photovoltaic Reliability Lab (Arizona). This paper presents an analysis on the SLF for each test site at ten different tilt angles. Based on the analysis of a yearlong data obtained in 2015, it appears to indicate that the Arizona site experienced the highest annual soiling loss with a significant dependence on the tilt angle while the other four sites experienced a negligibly small annual soiling loss with practically no dependence on the tilt angle.