Cleaning PhotoVoltaic Solar Panels by Drone
Aerodynamic
Mohamed Mohandes
Department of Electrical Engineering Center for Engineering Research
King Fahd University of Petroleum and King Fahd University of Petroleum and
2021 4th International Symposium on Advanced Electrical and Communication Technologies (ISAECT) | 978-1-6654-3773-8/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ISAECT53699.2021.9668543
Minerals, KFUPM
Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia Dhahran, 31261, Saudi Arabia
mohandes@kfupm.edu.sa srehman@kfupm.edu.sa
Floris Schulze
Managing Director and CEO
CESI Middle East
DAFZA-5WA, 326 - Dubai, UAE
floris.schulze@cesi.it
Abstract—In the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, sandstorms are
quite frequent and cause dust accumulation on PV panel
surfaces that act as a barrier to solar radiation. This decreases
of the solar radiation energy absorption and subsequently
reduces the energy output of the panels. The present effort aims
at reducing the dust accumulation on PV panels by flying the
drone above these panels at certain heights and time intervals.
This paper demonstrates the effectiveness of a drone flying over
photovoltaic (PV) panels to remove accumulated dust and
improve their efficiency. The downward thrust of the drone due
to its cruise at a certain height above the PV panels is able to
remove most of the accumulated dust if performed regularly.
The tests were conducted at King Fahd University of Petroleum
and Minerals (KFUPM) beach, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia by
loading each panel uniformly with 20, 50, and 100 CC of dust.
Keywords—Solar Panel, dust removal, cleaning system, PV
performance
I. INTRODUCTION
Currently, the materialistic lifestyle and human activities,
which are energy-intensive, are causing increases in carbon
dioxide and other harmful gas emissions. This has dual
harmful effects, causing an adverse change in the atmospheric
environment and at the same time depleting fossil fuel
reserves at a faster pace. In addition, public health is
negatively affected due to air, water, and soil pollution. This
global and domestic environmental problem can be addressed
by utilizing renewable and clean sources of energy like wind,
solar photovoltaic (PV), solar thermal, geothermal, tidal,
ocean, and biomass. Nowadays solar PV is becoming popular
due to its commercial acceptance, technological development,
ease of installation, low cost of equipment and maintenance,
and its distributive nature. Once, the sunlight and the PV panel
are available together, power can be generated.
Solar PV panels are expected to be more useful in Saudi
Arabia since the country has high intensities of global solar
radiation and long sunshine durations throughout the year.
Average solar radiation in Saudi Arabia varies between a
minimum of 4.5 kWh/m2 at Tabuk and a maximum of 7.0
kWh/m2 at Bisha [1]. Saudi Arabia plans to develop a 200
GW installed capacity PV power plant by 2030 that is
expected to cover an area of 5,000 km2 and will cost around
200 billion USD [2]. Saudi Arabia faces two major challenges
in order to maintain the efficiency of the PV panels. Both high
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Shafigur Rehman Wael Suliman
Center for Artificial Intelligence
Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd
Minerals, KFUPM University, PMU
Khobar, 39152, Saudi Arabia
wsuliman@pmu.edu.sa
temperature and dust in the desert region cause reduction in
PV panel output and hence need to be maintained below
certain levels [3]. There has been a great research emphasis on
finding means to keep panels clean from the accumulation and
at the same time without damaging the PV panel's surface [4].
The accumulated dust on the surface of the solar panel
attenuates the reception of light causing the efficiency to
decrease. The PV panel performance drops up to 40% [5] due
to dust accumulation on the surface. Furthermore, the PV
panel's daily performance losses range from 0.3% up to 1% in
desert regions [6]. Keep in mind the high frequency of dust
storms combined with humidity, which makes it difficult to
clean the panels manually at a reasonable cost. The available
methods today require specialized skilled labors to operate the
equipment intelligently and at the same time ensure that the
solar panels are not damaged. The cleaning of big PV farms
could affect the workers’ health negatively if they are working
under extreme weather conditions [7].
Usually, most cleaning methods for PV panels utilize
water which is scarce and costly in desert climatic zones
similar to Saudi Arabia. Considering that solar panels need to
be cleaned at least once per month, large quantities of water
will be required which will add to the cost. Modern techniques
use automatic robots, which are slow and require water to
clean the surfaces and hence may not be optimum for big PV
plants in Saudi Arabia and other regions with similar climates.
The proposed idea of using the downward thrust of a drone
will eliminate the need for water and the utilization of robots
to clean solar PV Panels. While flying over the panels, a drone
can remove the dust from the panel and improve the efficiency
of the PV panels. This method consumes only a battery to fly
the drone and the freely available air and hence is optimal for
cleaning the solar panels.
This paper proposes a suitable path and schedule for the
drone to clean the solar PV panels. Drone-based panel surface
cleaning is advantageous in terms of cost, manual labor, and
water conservation. However, it needs high capital cost and
suffers from limited battery life. Moreover, this field is still in
the early stages of development and fewer research papers are
available in the literature [8].
 II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Cleaning PV panels may or may not be justified depending
on the soiling type and the place where the solar panels are
installed [9]. PV panel cleaning is important to maintain the
power harvesting efficiency. In this section, several cleaning
methods are discussed.
A. Manual Cleaning
The most common method of cleaning requires human
force to clean the panel manually with the help of basic
cleaning devices (brush, soap, and water). Skilled
professional workers should perform the cleaning process in
order to avoid damage to the solar panels. This method is not
always suitable as the solar panels may be installed at a height
up to 20 feet from the ground. Additionally, large amounts of
water are wasted in such type of cleaning.
B. Robotic Cleaning
This method uses a system with sensors and a precise
controller. The mechanical method is useful when the source
of water is not possible. However, this method can use water
as in manual method. The disadvantage of this method that
the weight of the device can cause damage to the surface of
PV panel. Besides that, power consumption is more
compared to the manual method.
There are several proposed methods to clean PV panels
[10-13]. However, the initial and maintenance costs of such
system is high and the ability of the system to survive severe
weather conditions in Saudi Arabia is questionable.
M. A. Jaradat et al. proposed a method to remove dust
using a single robot [11]. The method consists of two parts,
the first part is the robot and the second part is the automated
carrier. The carrier is a cart that moves on a rail platform,
which allows the robot to move from one panel to another, as
shown in Figure 1. The design of the robot gives the capability
of the size to be adjusted.
Fig. 1: System operation sequence [11]
Another robot design is proposed by sheibo et al [12]. The
robot is designed for panels with fixed size (800mm x
900mm). The cleaning part of the robot is a rolling brush with
a dust suction behind the brush. The dust suction is added to
guide the dust to the dust box.
Several robot models in this section use brush to clean the
PV panel. Some models add extra cleaning functions to
assure that the panel is cleaned. M. U. Hassan et al. proposed
to add a fan to the robot [13]. The designed cleaning robot
consists of a rolling brush, a fan to avert slippage, and an air
blower to remove dust. The robot can clean the panel even if
the panel is tilted up to 25 degrees. Figure 2 shows the
schematic of the cleaning robot.
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Fig 2: Schematic of cleaning robot [13]
C. ElectrostaticPrecipitator
Electrostatic precipitator is a filtration device that uses an
induced electrostatic charge to dispel dust particles from the
surface of the PV panels. This method ensures continuous and
automatic removal of dry dust without the need for water. It
incorporates charged electrodes that are powered by a signal
from an Arduino microcontroller when the weight on the
panels surface is increased due to accumulated dust. Negative
electrodes induce negative charge on the dust particles on the
surface that will accumulate at the positive electrodes due to
charge attraction. Thus effectively removing dust particles
from the PV panels and in turn increasing the efficiency
effortlessly and automatically [14]. A disadvantage of this
method is the need for power to generate an electric field.
D. Drone Based Cleaning System
The downward thrust generalted by the propellers of
drones can be used to clean the surface of PV panels. This
method is by far the fastest and the most secure. It doesn’t
touch the panels and requires no human interaction. It has been
shown that using drones to clean solar panels increases
efficiency by up to 35% and reduced maintenance costs by up
to 60% [15]. Moreover, the drone can be programmed to clean
the panels periodically without human intervention. The cost
and time analysis will be provided in the result section.
There are several cleaning methods used to clean the PV
panel. Each method has its advantages and disadvantages.
Table 1 summarizes the key advantages and disadvantages of
each mentioned cleaning method.
TABLE I. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF DIFFERENT PV
PANEL CLEANING METHODS
No. Cleaning Method Advantage Disadvantage
1 Manual No need Costly
electricity
2 Robot Automated Power
Consumption
3 Electrostatic No moving Needs high voltage
parts
4 Drone Fast and Battery
programmable Consumption
III. METHODOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
Drone industry has flourished since its use in civilian
applications and its availablity to individuals. There are two
types of drones: fixed-wing and multi-rotor [16]. In this work
we used the latter drone since its speed and height are more
controllable. Drones can inspect solar panels to find any dust
accumulation and other faults instead of human visual
inspection.
 In this work, we we used DJI SPARK drone as a proof of
concept. The weight of the used drone is 0.3 kg and can
operate at a speed of 20-28 km/h, at flight height up to 2000m,
and at ambient temperatures ranging from 0° to 40° [17]. It
has an enhanced awareness system which includes main
camera, vision positioning system, 3D sensing system, dual-
band GPS, and high-precision inertial measurement unit. Its
maximum flight time is 16 minutes which is enough for the
current proof of concept application.
The drone was programmed to implement several flying
patterns including vertical, horizontal and diagonal for
cleaning the panels using downward air flow from the
propellers. An example of a drone route on top of the panel is
shown in Figure 3. The effects of blowing dust on the
efficiency of the panels (based on output of current and Fig. 4: PV panels in KFUPM beach.
voltage) is measured for each pattern.
Since the system is DC, power of the solar panel is
calculated as:
= (1)
where is the power, is the voltage and is the current.
The value of V of this specific solar panel is a constant 20.5
V at all times and I is the output current of the solar panel.
We will use the value of P at zero dust to be the reference
power, call it Po.
Thus power decrease in percentage
= ∗ 100% (2)

To calculate the power increase, the amount of current is

measured while the panel is covered with dust to measure the
power PD:
= ∙ (3)
where ID is the current with dust on the panel and V, as
mentioned before, is a constant 20.5 V. Then immediately
after the drone passes above the panel we find the power PC:
= ∙ (4)
Fig. 3: A horizontal scheme of drone route for cleaning PV
where IC is the current post flight of the drone above the
panels. panel. Thus the power increase Pi in percentage is:
A. Experimental Procedure ∙ ∙
% = ∙ 100 = ∙ 100 = ∙ 100
The experiment was conducted using a 60-watt solar PV ∙
panel. The electrical parameters of this panel are measured to (5)
examine the effect of dust on the power output.The Thus,
experiment includes several stages.
% = ∙ 100 (6)
• Measure the decrease in output power with the amount
of dust accumulation. As seen, for solar PV panels, the power is a function of
• Measure the power of the output of the panel before and the output current only. The dust reduction percentage is
after the drone has blown the dust away. Figure 4 shows found as:
snapshots of the drone in the process of cleaning the solar
panel. = ∗ 100% (7)
• Quantify the amount of reduced dust using the drone’s
different flight patterns above the panels. To do this, we where Di is the reference volume of dust on the panel and Dr
will use a graduated cylinder to measure the amount of is the remaining dust on the panel post drone flight.
dust to be manually placed on the panel, then move the
drone above it. Finally, a graph of the output power IV. RESULTS AND EVALUATION
decay over 5 weeks is plotted. First, let’s see the general effect of different amounts of
dust accumulation on the panel’s surface:

TABLE II. EFFECT OF DUST ON SOLAR PANEL POWER OUTPUT

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 Dust Power
Voltage Current Power Drone Reference Current (A) Post Flight Power
Volume Decrease
(V) (A) (W) Flight Current IC Efficiency
(ml) (%) Without With Dust
0 20.5 1.46 29.93 0 Method (A) Increase Pi
Dust ID
1 20.5 1.36 27.88 6.85 Horizontal 1.52 0.49 0.83 69.4 %
5 20.5 1.33 27.26 8.92 Vertical 1.40 0.59 0.73 23.73 %
10 20.5 1.26 25.83 13.70 Diagonal 1.71 0.59 0.93 57.63 %
20 20.5 1.11 22.75 24.00
30 20.5 1.02 20.91 30.14
40 20.5 0.92 18.86 37.00 Table V shows that the horizontal flight method is the most
50 20.5 0.83 17.02 43.13 efficient among the three methods.
100 20.5 0.51 10.46 65.07
In general, Tables III-V shows that the horizontal path
produces higher power increase. The reason this happens is
Table II shows that increasing the duct volume decearses due to the drone covering more area of the panel’s surface
the current and consequently the genrated power. when it goes left-right rather than up-down and closer to the
borders than the diagonal. At very low volumes of dust, there
isn’t much reduction in current, and blowing dust completely
is very easy for all paths and we can see from the tables that
the vertical and horizontal patterns are almost a match, when
the dust volume became large. Figure 6 and 7 show both
power increase and dust reduction for all fly patterns.

Fig. 5: Graphof Effect of Dust on Solar Panel Power

Output.
Next, we will showcase the effect of the drone’s
propellers, in different flight patterns, on the amount of power
(efficiency) increase at dust amount of 20 ml, 50 ml and 100
ml to see the different effects in Tables III-V. In all cases the Fig. 6: Power Increase for all cases
voltage remains a constant 20.5 V.

TABLE III. POWER ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT DRONE FLIGHT

METHODS (20 ML)

Reference Current
Drone Post Flight Power
(A)
Flight Current Efficiency
Method Without With IC (A) Increase Pi
Dust Dust ID
Horizontal 1.62 1.16 1.53 31.9 %
Vertical 1.43 1.07 1.36 27.1 %
Diagonal 1.81 1.41 1.68 19.15 %

Table III shows that the diagonal Drone flight method did not Fig. 7: Dust reduction for all cases
incearse the power efficiency as the horizontal and vertical
methods.
The time of the drone flying over the surface of the panel
TABLE IV. POWER ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT DRONE FLIGHT
was measured for each method. Given that the battery of the
METHODS (50 ML) drone enables 16 minutes of flight on a single charge. The
capacity of the drone’s battery was founded to be 16.87 Wh
Drone Reference Current (A) Post Flight Power which is a measure of electrical energy equivalent to a power
Flight Without With Dust Current IC Efficiency consumption of 16.87 watt for one hour. The cost per 1 kW
Method Dust ID (A) Increase Pi
for industries in Saudi is 0.20 SAR. We want to find how
Horizontal 2.36 1.34 2.16 61.2 % much does it cost to clean one panel using the drone we have?
Vertical 2.34 1.16 1.97 69.83 %
68.03
Table VI shows the cost of power for each flight pattern.
Diagonal 2.16 1.22 2.05

Table IV shows that thedifference of the increase of power

efficiency is similar for the three methods.

TABLE V. POWER ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT DRONE FLIGHT TABLE VI. COST OF POWER CONSUMPTION FOR EACH DRONE FLIGHT
METHODS (100 ML) PATTERN AT 100 ML OF DUST.

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 Flight Flight Consumed Cost per Cost/Power
Pattern Period power panel increase
over (watt) (SAR)
panel
Horizontal 2.6 s 0.01218 0.00000024 3.5
Vertical 1.2 s 0.00562 0.00000011 4.7
Diagonal 3.2 s 0.015 0.00000030 5.2
All the cost calculations comply with the electricity tariffs
for industries in Saudi Arabia. Note that the cost very low,
this is because the drone doesn’t consume much power since
it is on the smaller and weaker end of the spectrum. Also, we
are assuming that, in real world application, the drone will be
always above the panels and never flying over the ground. If
we could include the cost of the drone not flying above the
panel, the cost would increase.
V. CONCLUSION
It is concluded that the multilayer dust accumulation on
the surface of solar panels reduces its the efficiency to
measurable level. Thus, the utilization of the innovated
method for cleaning the PV panels is essential to maintain the
efficiency. The experimental results show that the power of
solar panel decreases exponentially with an amount of dust of
around 100 ml spread on the panel. It is observed that PV
panel output power is increased by almost 70% for dust
volume 50 ml for different drone flowing paths. Below 50 ml
dust spread, the PV performance is observed 31.9%, 27.1%
and 19.15% corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and
diagonal flying paths of the drone; respectively. For 100 ml
of dust spread on PV panel, the efficiencies of 69.4%,
57.63%, and 23.73% are found for horizontal, diagonal, and
vertical drone passes. Thus, at low and medium volumes, they
are similar, but at high volumes vertical loses. The dust
reduction follows suit as well, with horizontal being the best
pattern scheme.
Overall, horizontal movement of the drone is found to be
the best scheme for effective cleaning of the panels and hence
achieving the highest efficiency in all cases consistently.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to acknowledge the support of the
Deanship of Resarch Oversight and Coordination at KFUPM
under contract DF191024. The authors would like to
acknowledge the help of students F. Bin Hussein, A. Aljohani,
A. Almusharaf, and M. Alsalman through their snior project
in 2019.
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