Outdoor and Indoor Testing of Transparent Antisoiling Coating Based Fluorine-Doped Tin Oxide for Solar Energy Applications

33rd European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition; 151-155 The installation of photovoltaic modules in the MENA region is very beneficial if we consider the high amount of solar irradiation received by this area. Nevertheless, the presence of soiling sources mainly from dust and sand storm reduces, significantly, the performances of this technology and increases the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) costs. For this reason, it’s crucial to find solution for dust removal, to enhance the modules optical efficiency, thus the electricity production. Super-hydrophobic coatings can be a good solution for this issue. In this paper, we evaluated the soiling effect on three different PV glazing samples under the semi-arid climate of Benguerir in Morocco. Furthermore, the coating performances were evaluated by comparing the transmittance drop of two glass samples with two different coating layers based on SnO2 and SnO2F. The results show that soiling is an immense problem in Morocco where the transmittance drop can reach 38% after 13 weeks of exposition. Furthermore, adequate coatings on glass can be a good anti-soiling solution. It is found that the SnO2:F coating on glass enhances the transmittance by 3.22% in comparison to 2.99% for SnO2 on glass.