Soiling losses in Chile (Atacama)

[Ronald Reagon R]

Hi everyone,

Anyone have some good resources materials regarding the soiling losses % in Atacama desert region especially in the city of Calama.

Thank you, 

Ronald 

[Mark Mikofski]

Hi Ronald,

Have you tried one of the soiling models in pvlib. For dust soiling there's both the Kimber model and the HSU model:

https://pvlib-python.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/effects_on_pv_system_output/soiling.html

Both models combine rainfall, but while Kimber requires some assumption of build up rate and returns energy lost, HSU correlates transmission loss to the concentration of airborne particulate matter PM2.5 and PM10. So if you only have rainfall, you will have to stick with the Kimber model. Measured soiling buildup rates vary between 0.1%/day to 0.3%/day depending on proximity to agriculture and transportation, urban vs. rural vs. desert, etc. NREL has some measurements of soiling rates: https://www.nrel.gov/pv/soiling.html

For snow soiling, you can try either Townsend or Marion models, although I would suggest perhaps taking an average of the two.

https://pvlib-python.readthedocs.io/en/stable/reference/effects_on_pv_system_output/snow.html

Then usually which ever soiling is worse trumps, which is almost always snow if there is snow.

I would be interested to learn if there are any cleaning stations or soiling measurements in South America. Perhaps Catlin Mattheis from Fracsun could help?

Good luck!

Mark

[Adam R. Jensen]

I visited the Atacama Desert Solar Platform (PSDA) a few years back and seem to recall that they did various soiling measurements. The site is rather close to Calama (<100 km) and probably has similar conditions. I would recommend you to reach out to the site owner.

Regards,

Adam