Aware of the benefits of a clean energy source like solar power, a former team of Red Deer Polytechnic (RDP) engineering technology students sought to answer the question: how can you actually keep it clean?
Shedding some light on a solution for this problem, the team has been honoured as a provincial finalist for the Capstone Project of the Year Award by the Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta’s (ASET).
ASET officials state that while solar panels are increasingly common as a climate-friendly, clean energy source, their efficiency decreases by as much as 50 per cent when they get dirty due to dust or grime.
They explain three types of systems currently exist for cleaning solar panels:
Former RDP engineering technology students Kyle Victor, Carson West and Nathan Crombie, therefore, developed a pneumatic air blast cleaning system that, they state, requires minimal maintenance, is cost-effective, simple to install, fully automated, needs no water supply, has few moving parts, can operate in any climate, is adaptable to any panel array geometry, and has the potential to be powered by the same solar panel system it is designed to clean.
In the former team’s prototype, one pneumatic air sprayer is attached on the top of the solar panel and another in the middle. An air compressor with tubing is connected to the sprayers. An Arduino kit, which is an open-source electronics platform based on software and hardware deemed easy-to-use, is programmed to run a timed sequence for each sprayer. When the process starts, the top sprayer will spray air for a few seconds. When the dust is cleared off the top half of the panel, the top sprayer shuts off and the middle sprayer turns on for a few seconds to carry the already moving dust off the rest of the panel.
“Our team had two goals for this project. The first was to create a design applicable to both residential and industrial solar panel systems. The second was to ensure that it was cheaper and more efficient than cleaning systems currently available,” said former team member Victor. “Our system can clear off a solar panel in seconds unlike other systems where, depending on the location of the panel, that panel could be the last in the line waiting to be cleaned and may have spent hours operating at low efficiency.”
“The former Red Deer Polytechnic team must be commended for their clear-eyed approach to resolving a practical issue associated with solar energy,” said ASET Chief Executive Officer Barry Cavanaugh. “It represents a significant step forward in maximizing efficiency of an important clean energy source, and demonstrates the combination of practicality and innovation that characterizes the engineering technology profession.”
The former RDP team’s project is one of eight finalists named by ASET for the 2022 Capstone Project of the Year Award. The winning project is expected to be announced later this year.
The Award was established by ASET in 2017 in response, they say, to overwhelming member interest in back-to-school stories about Capstone projects undertaken by teams of engineering technology students from NAIT, SAIT, RDP and Lethbridge College as part of their end-of-program requirements.
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