Parametric Study of Solar Panel Performance in KSA using Arduino Platform

The PV module is an important part of the solar system. Efficiency is a parameter used to compare the performance of one module to another. Efficiency is defined as the rate at which a PV module emits energy to absorb energy from the sun. The current paper investigates the effect of ambient temperature, PV module temperature, and dust accumulation on the solar panel. The current work is being carried out in three different locations in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). During the present work, the ambient temperature changed from 10 ^oC to 34 ^oC and the PV module temperature changed from 12 ^oC to 66^oC. This variation in temperature values due to the effect of weather in different location. While the efficiency changed from 4% to 11%. The deviation percentage of PV module temperature from theoretically calculated values was not exceed +15% which reflect the good agreement with the previous work in this field. The results show that with the increase in ambient temperature the temperature of the PV module increased. This leads to the decrease of the efficiency of PV module since it becomes hotter. In addition the results of the present work show the negative effect of accumulating dust on the performance of solar panels.