Do Research.

Project Description:

Renewable energy is the most sustainable way of energy generation. With growing concern of climate change and environmental deplation, economies across the globe are promoting development of Solar Power Plants. The exponential growth of any technologies brings the concern of the end-of-life management of the assets. The same is in the case of Solar Power Plants. 

Solar Energy Industry is heading towards the challenge of the disposal of the solar panels. Currently, 60 million solar panels across the globe are waiting for the disposal. Most of the materials used in solar panels including Solar Cells are recyclable. However, the current practices employed for the recycling of the solar panels are not able to recover the important and expensive materials being used in the solar panels. Currently, majority of solar panels end up in land-fills, only fraction of the total volume is being recycled. There are many reasons behind this phenomenon such as lack of regulations and incentives for recycling, and high cost of recycling.

The objective of this research project is to study the recycling procedures used commercially, and the factors affecting the recyclibility of solar panels.

Project Description:

To tackle the climate change across the globe and to meet the net zero target, economies across the globe are encouraging the renewable power generation. International Solar Alliance (ISA) aims at mobilizing more than USD 1000 billion of investment needed by 2030 for the massive deployment of solar energy. The installed capacity of Solar Power Plants in India alone sums to 46 GW till 2022, which is excpeted to be increased up to 270 GW by 2030.

Ideal location for setting up the utility scale solar power plant is the deserted areas considering the availability of high irradiation and the large area of land at low price. However, such locations come with many challenges such as dust storms, extremely elevated temperature, scarcity of water, and many more. Accumulation of the dust over solar panels leads to loss of energy generation. Usually, Solar Power Plant operators employ manual cleaning process which uses water to remove the dust from the panels. Currently, few companies across the country have employed the robotic cleaning system which uses relatively less water as compared to manual cleaning process. The estimated numbers of solar panels on the fields in India currently are 138 Million. If it is assumed that (i) 3 litre of water is being used to clean one solar panel, (ii) panels are being cleaned twice a month, the volume of clean water used to clean solar panel annually sums to approx. 9930 million litres. Such quantity of water can be used for many other purpose such as drinking water, irrigation and etc. The water usage for panel cleaning is expected to increase exponentially along with the growth of solar power industry.

In line with the government’s initiative and the organization’s vision of sustainable development of the society, I2E Lab has aimed to develop the sustainable PV Module Cleaning System for utility scale solar power plants.