2020 5th International Conference on Recent Trends on Electronics, Information, Communication & Technology (RTEICT-2020), November 12th &

13th 2020

Solar Powered PV Panel Cleaning Robot

2020 International Conference on Recent Trends on Electronics, Information, Communication & Technology (RTEICT) | 978-1-7281-9772-2/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/RTEICT49044.2020.9315548

Santosh Kumar S Shivashankar KeshavaMurthy

Assistant Professor Dept. of E&CE, Professor & Head of Dept. E&CE, Professor & CoE, Dept. E&CE,
Sri Venkateshwara College Sri Venkateshwara College Sri Venkateshwara College
of Engineering, Bengaluru, India, of Engineering, Bengaluru, India, of Engineering, Bengaluru, India,
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Solar energy is the abundant renewable energy only once a year may not have a important effect on the
on earth which doesn’t pollute the environment while producing annual energy output for the easy reason that in a short time,
the energy using Solar Photo Voltaic (PV) panel. Efficiency of dirt stacks up again, making the difference negligible.
the PV panel depends on the amount of light falls on it, due to Especially hiring the manpower for cleaning the PV panel is
the azimuth angle of solar panel, deposition of dust on PV panel difficult task now a days.
reduces the efficiency of the energy generated. To increase the
efficiency of the PV panel, periodically it has to be cleaned. This II. LITERATURE SURVEY
paper proposes a solar panel cleaning robot which periodically
cleans PV panel autonomously, the surface of the panel is Solar PV panel cleaning method using automatic control
cleaned by blowing air, spraying the liquid and wiping out the robotic cleaner [1] is proposed, to maintain the overall
dust with wiper and drying the wet content on the panel using efficiency of the solar panel. It can be used for large scale
cylindrical brush. The proposed robot is controlled remotely by solar energy plant and small-scale solar plant. Automatic
Internet of Things (IoT) which reduces the human effort in the Robotic cleaning system will reduce manual work and dust
solar plant and can be remotely monitored. Also the robot is a associated problem on solar panel.
self-powered generates the power required by Solar PV panel
mounted on the robot. The proposed system increases the In the future, the rack and pinion mechanism system can be
efficiency of the power generation by periodically cleaning using replaced by various forms of solar panel installation, such as
Robot. residential rooftop, commercial rooftop, solar farm, carport,
utilizing advanced technology. The requirement of the
Keywords— Solar, Photo, Voltaic, IoTs, robot, plant, cleaning depends on the type the of the area where the Solar
PV. PV panels are installed. In case of the dessert, cleaning of the
panel is required on the daily basis as the flow of wind will
I. INTRODUCTION be high. The proposed model was implemented for the small
Growing interest in renewable energy has resulted to scale solar plants such as solar pump, solar panels installed
significant expansion of the solar Photo-voltaic (PV) sector on the roof of the house etc. The proposed cleaning system is
over the past decade. Because photovoltaic energy is a designed to operate by using the mobileapp. The Cleaning
technology available. It has become a common investment robot is operated by rechargeable battery powered by solar
for both businesses and residential consumers. This demand panel to recharge, it is operated at 12v also a trigger switch is
has therefore stimulated studies to increase the general output used in mobileapp. The robot consists of the wiper
strength of PV systems. mechanism which moves horizontally, mechanism of the
Any material that spreads through the atmosphere involves wiper is controlled by the mobileapp.
particles of soil and dust (suspended dust), smoke, fog, and The self-charging robot has been proposed to clean the duat
particles called dust. Stab formed from terrestrial inorganic on the solar panel during the night time so that power
and organic substances. Dust is made up of substances such generation during the day time will not be affected during the
as storms of sand, bacteria, smoke from factories, pollen, cleaning process. [2]. The robot will sense the dimming of
forest fires and vapours from volcanoes. They also include sun light and checks whether it is right or left of the solar
the suspended solid particles of the atmosphere that stay in panel and starts cleaning the solar PV panels. The night
that remains in the air for long periods. These particles can be detection is done using an LDR sensor which varies its output
transferred over lengthy distances with wind motions. The depending upon the light fallen on it. A special robot for PV
regions caused by elevated concentration of dust experience cleaning [3], used to clean solar cell from dirt accumulation
considerable losses due to pollution from dust. Many as well as to reduce the power loses. PV cleaning robot can
precious studies have verified that the deposition of airborne be used without need for human intervention to speed up the
dust on the photovoltaic indoor modules decreases the cell work in the large PV farms. The robot moves in the tracks
glazing transmission. It also results in a substantial that are mounted on the photovoltaic panel structure. The
degradation of PV modules ' solar conversion effectiveness. robot is a water-free robotic cleaning process combines a
The dust deposition on the outdoor PV studies focused on the powerful-soft microfiber brush supposed to remove 99% of
glazing transparency performance dust daily and keeping panels at optimal production rates.
However, it is not always as simple to clean solar panels. First They focus in this robot on decrease power sources used to
of all, there is the accessibility problem. Because photovoltaic observe rareness sources like water, and guarantee robot
panels are often located on hazardous and hard to achieve work in any location without need of water. The design of the
areas, it may be difficult to manually wash them and it robot is a rolling brush connected to a body that traverses
requires time to do it securely. Secondly, cleaning a panel

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vertically along the frame and the frame will move matches to threshold value then it will start the process to
horizontally along the array. clean the Photovoltaic panel efficiently and Effectively. First
robot will Adjust its hand According to photovoltaic panel
III. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTAION OF SOLAR length and breadth. Wiper brush is used to clean the panel.
PANEL CLEANING ROBOT The Robot will clean the panel with the help of photovoltaic
The proposed work aims to design the robot that can remove panel cleaning liquid and Water. EnviroClean liquid is used
the dust using dust cleaner, clean the panel by using for cleaning the PV panel. Once the First panel is cleaned, it
EnviroClean liquid and dry the panel by air blower, which will go to next panel and repeat the same process for complete
can sense the dimension of the PV panels and adjust the robot cleaning of Photovoltaic panel effectively. The times of
to clean the PV panel. To incorporate IoT technology to the Cleaning the panel depends upon the location where
Autonomous Robot to monitor and control the cleaning Photovoltaic panels are planted. If Photovoltaic panel is in
process of the solar PV panels. This work aims to develop the desert area then panel has to be cleaned in every two days but
self-powered, automatic, cost effective and energy efficient if in other location dust is less, we can clean the panel in a
robot for cleaning the Solar PV panels. The proposed system week. The complete working model is explained below.
consists of the two parts viz Robot and Blynk server. Robot
The second part of the proposed system is the blynk app at the
performs the cleaning of the Solar PV panel remotely
controller end used for controlling the movements of the
controlled by the blynk app at the receiver end.
robot.
A. Robot Model

The robot consists of the base made up of a PVC pipe chassis

and wooden plank will enable the bot to move forward and
backward ensuring a linear motion. The Arm mounted on the
support which is a PVC pipe is inclined at an angle based on
the orientation and angle of the solar panel. An ultrasonic
sensor is mounted on the base and the arm. The sensors at the
base will ensure that it does not collide with any obstruction
be it an object or person thus maintaining a safe distance. The
sensors at the end of the arm will detect the panel surface and
the edges of the panel. A sensor placed at the bottom of the
arm will detect the presence of the panel surface for the
cleaning action. Figure 1: Solar Panel Cleaning Robot.

The sensors at the sides will detect the edges of the panel for Blynk has designed for the IoTs. It can control hardware
the forward and backward movement of the arm. The remotely, it can display sensor data, it can store data,
semicircle movement of the wiper as shown in figure 1 is visualize it.
achieved by the servomotor which is connected at the end of There are three major components in the platform:
the arm. The servomotor is used for precise angular motion of x Blynk App - allows to you create amazing interfaces
the cleaning part. The cleaning part consists of the wiper for for your projects using various widgets we provide.
removing the dust and the water gets injected through a pipe
in intervals to avoid wastage of water. A wiper will ensure that x Blynk Server - responsible for all the
the surface gets cleaned completely and remove excess water. communications between the smartphone and
A cylindrical brush rotates on the panel and wipes out the hardware. we are using Blynk Cloud for connection
water and dry the panel so that dust will not deposit on the wet between hardware and control center. It’s open-
surface of the panel. The proposed robot is self-powered by source, could easily handle thousands of devices and
the solar panel which generates the power required for the can even be launched on a Raspberry Pi.
cleaning operation. The energy generated by the solar PV x Blynk Libraries - for all the popular hardware
panel is stored in the battery and can be used in the absence of platforms - enable communication with the server
the sunlight. and process all the incoming and out coming
The proposed solar panel cleaning Robot is operated by using commands.
Internet of Things (IoT) application. Blynk is designed to
control hardware remotely, it can display sensor data, store
data, visualize it. It enables communication with the server
and process all the incoming and out coming commands. The
IR sensors, servomotors, DC motors, ultrasonic sensors, and
all other sensors are controlled and monitor by blynk
application. It is an IoT platform, where controlling and
monitor using Wi-Fi. The power supply is giving to the solar
panel cleaning Robot through the rechargeable battery of 12v.
The solar panel cleaning robot will be working on line
follower method. Once the robot reaches to panel it will Figure 2: Block Diagram of the Blynk Server.
measure the distance between panel and robot. If the distance

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Every time when the user press a Button in the Blynk app, the Area of cleaned PV cell= (3.14x502)/2 =3926.99 cm2
message travels to space the Blynk Cloud, where it magically Total area of PV cell not cleaned = 5000-3926.99=1073.01
finds its way to your hardware. It works the same in the cm2
opposite direction and everything happens in a blynk of an (3926.99/5000) *100 =78.53%
eye as shown in. Figure 2. The blynk app is installed in the Based on calculation only 78.53% is cleaned.
mobile phone and connected to the robot and controlled by
the user.
B. Flow chart
The operation of the robot is explained in the flowchart.
Figure. 3 shows the process starts with the movement of bot
with its Ultrasonic sensor ON. When the base sensor detects
Distance between the panel and bot equal to 10 cm, the bot
will initiate its program or else it will not start process until its
distance equals to 10cm or if any obstacle is detected it will
make a turn . When the distance condition is satisfied the bot
base motor will stop ,and then infrared sensor will get on and
detect the value if the value is not satisfied then again it will
detect the value until it gets satisfied value then servomotor
and sensor will turn ON.

Figure 5: diagram of the cleaned surface of the PV Panel

IV. RESULT AND DISCUSSION

Robot detects the dimension of the panel with the help of IR

sensor and move the bot according to the sensors. Blynk
application is use to control & monitor the robot as shown in
the figure 6. Adjustment of the wiper on the panel with the
help of blynk application. The wiper is mounted on the robot
so that can automatically clean the panel with suitable liquid.
The water tank is mounted on the robot so that it can spray
water on the panel with the help of sprayer.
The Figure 7 shows the performance evaluation of the Solar
PV panel cleaning robot and manual cleaning. It has been
seen that the power generation after cleaning using manual
method produces less compared to the panel cleaned using
Robot. The proposed Robot will increase production of the
solar energy for the large solar plants.

Figure 3: Flow Chart of the Robot.

The dust sensor in the robot detects the dust on the panel
surface at a distance of 5cm, robot start blowing the air
followed by the Water and wiper will move for 2 times, then
the cylindrical brush moves on the panel and wipes out the
water present on the panel. After this process the sensor and
motor will turn OFF and now the robot will move further 15
cm to the next PV panel and again the process repeats itself
from detecting panel distance from base sensor. If the distance
is greater than 10 for next 15 cm, the bot will terminate its
operation.

C. Total amount of area cleaned by wiper

Photo voltaic cell: -

Length=100cm
Figure 6: Robot control in the BlynkAPP.
Width=50cm
Length of wiper=50cm
Total area of PV cell= 100x50=5000 cm2

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 [8] Swapnil Acharekar1, Nived Bhoir2, Vedant Dalvi3, Lerson
D’Souza4, Sangeeta Kotecha5, “Cost Effective and Automatic
Robotic Arm Wiper for Solar Panel Cleaning”, International
Conference on Innovation and Advance Technologies in
Engineering, ISSN (e): 2250-3021, ISSN (p): 2278-8719.
[9] Nasib Khadka1,2*, Aayush Bista1,2, Binamra Adhikari3,
Ashish Shrestha1,2 and Diwakar Bista1,2, “Smart solar photovoltaic
panel cleaning system”, International Conference on Sustainable
Energy and Green Technology 2019, 2020.
[10] Omur Akyazi1*, Erdinc Sahin2, Timur Ozsoy3, Mehmet
Algul4, “A Solar Panel Cleaning Robot Design and Application”,
European Journal of Science and Technology, Special Issue, pp.
343-348, October 2019.
[11]. S. S. Kumar, D. Hemanth, S. Dwneeth, K. Dilip and A.
Divyatej, "Automated Package Delivery Accepting System - Smart
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on Electronics, Information, Communication & Technology
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[12]. A. Rao, neha and s. Santosh kumar, "smart iot based solar
V. CONCLUSION panel cleaning system," 2018 3rd ieee international conference
on recent trends in electronics, information & communication
technology (rteict), bangalore, india, 2018, pp. 2357-2361, doi:
The production of solar energy is reduced because of the 10.1109/rteict 42901.2018. 9012432.
deposition of the dust on the panel. The propose Solar PV
panel cleaning robot aims to remove the dust on the panel by
blowing the air. Using liquid to clean and wiped out by using
the cylindrical brush. The movement of the robot is remotely
monitored by using the Blynk app, robot is self-powered by
solar Panel and battery. It has found that the power generation
has increased in the solar plants and production is increased
when compared the manual cleaning. The prevention of
manual shifting of robot from one row to another will be
avoided. The proposed system aim has to overcome these
problems and increase the efficiency of the solar power
generation.
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