Cleaning solar panels with water
Of course, large solar power plants do not have thousands of workers washing them by hand. This is simply impossible, because solar panels are installed on land measuring tens or even hundreds of square italy phone number resource kilometers. For example, the largest solar power plant in the world, Midong, covers 133.5 square kilometers and consists of more than 5 million solar panels.
Most often, solar panels are sprayed with water, using heavy machinery or aircraft. Water quickly washes away all the dirt, but in the desert it has to be delivered by truck, which is very expensive. In addition, it must be clean so as not to leave streaks on the surface of the panels, which in themselves are dirt.
According to MIT Technology Review, 10 billion gallons of water are used to clean solar panels every year. That's enough water to supply about 2 million people with drinking water. Therefore, cleaning solar panels with water is considered an effective but very expensive method.
Solar panel cleaning robots
Another effective, but less expensive way to clean solar panels from dust is to use special equipment. According to IEEE Spectrum magazine, at the Shams 1 power plant near Abu Dhabi (UAE), the panels are cleaned using huge brushes on the robot arms of the machine. With the help of this tool, 258,048 mirrors are cleaned, which occupy an area of 2.5 square kilometers. The station's management believes that it is not necessary to clean the panels perfectly - the main thing is that their reflectivity does not fall below 85%.
