Air pollution and solar panels

Can dust and pollutants reduce solar power’s effectiveness? Air pollution can be a drag for solar energy. That pollution can cut the output of solar panels. And the energy losses from this are quite costly, a new study finds. Dust and other air pollutants can produce a haze that darkens the sky. That haze acts as a light filter and reduces how much sunlight reaches solar-energy panels. Its effect on the electricity production by those solar collectors can be significant, the new study finds. It estimates that across parts of India, China and the Arabian Peninsula alone, pollution can slash electricity from solar energy by 17 to 25 percent.
Other factors can strongly affect how efficient solar panels operate. Haze in the air isn’t the only factor that can limit how well solar panels work. If pollutant particles land on a panel’s flat surface, they will further block how much light gets through to the solar cells below. Dust can come from natural sources, such as windswept soils. But human activities produce much of these pollutants. Those activities include driving cars, powering factories and converting coal to electricity.

Polluted air reduces solar's effectiveness

Michael Bergin works for the Pratt School of Engineering. It’s at Duke University in Durham, N.C. Bergin led a team that collected dust and pollution from solar panels in India. Then his group calculated how much this pollution could cut the solar energy output there, in China and in Mideast nations.In India, polluted air appears to cut solar electricity by roughly 1 gigawatt (or billion watts). Natural dust and human-generated pollution contribute about equally here. In eastern China, fossil-fuel use contributes far more than does natural dust. China also produces more solar energy than any other country. So in China, air pollution’s toll is much bigger. It likely cuts electricity production by close to 11 gigawatts, the researchers calculate. That’s the full power output of 50.6 million photovoltaic solar panels. It’s also equal to 5,500 large-scale wind turbines or 1,100 coal-fired power plants. And it’s the amount of energy needed to power 1.1 billion LED light bulbs. Clearly, that’s a lot of energy being wasted. It’s also costly. Making up for that lost energy is costing China the equivalent of about $10 billion per year, Bergin notes. Regular cleaning of solar panels can help. Cleaning the air, he notes, will be much more problematic.

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