Solar Panel Study in the Desert Climate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Authors: Nayfeh Laith , Nayfeh Leia , Nayfeh Ammar 
Published: September 2023

The negative effects of climate change and global warming are no longer a futuristic issue to deal with. This is the result of the continued and extensive use of fossil fuels and subsequent greenhouse gasses emissions such as CO2. Earth has been warming at an alarmingly fast pace the last 40 years due to greenhouse gas emission and the trapping of heat in the atmosphere. To slow down and eliminate this unnatural warming rate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is essential. This is accomplished by an increase in the deployment and use of clean renewable energy. Solar energy continues to play a significant role in the clean energy shift due to the abundance and unlimited supply of energy provided by the sun. The use of solar energy is on an exponential rise thanks to recent government policies to reduce emissions. For example, solar energy production in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from 2009-2019 shows an exponential rise starting in 2016 reaching almost 3500 GWh of production in 2019 [1]. The UAE is also home to the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum solar park. The largest single site solar park the world. This project will help reduce more than 6.5 million tons of emissions and will have capacity of 5000 megawatts [2].

The United Arab Emirates is an ideal region for solar due the amount of sunshine and with very few cloudy/rainy days. However, desert climates have their own unique challenges, such as extreme heat and soling. Temperatures can reach above 40 in summer months in the UAE with high humidity and effect of soiling from dust is not very well understood [3]. Also, what is important is finding the optimal angle and direction of roof top solar panels to maximize the power and limit these negative effects.

In this work, we studied a real solar panel on the rooftop in Abu Dhabi. The solar panel was bought from a local vendor in the UAE. The solar panel is polysilicon with specs: 10W, Vmp 18V, Imp 0.56A, Voc 24.4V and ISC 0.69A under AM1.5G at 25°C. We placed the panel on a roof top in Abu Dhabi at Khalifa University. To find the optimal angle and location we tested the panels at 12noon to maximum sun power. We first fixed the angle around 22° based on literature, and then modified the direction from north, south, west and east to find which direction gave the peak. We found that south gave the highest power from the rest (10.32W). Then we changed from angle from this data from 0°-90° in steps of 10°. The data showed the maximum power is when panel is facing south with angle between 25°-30°. The optimum placement of solar panels is key in helping to mitigate the negative desert effects such at heat and soiling. In addition, to this study, we also studied the panel for a continuous period to see effects of soling and longer-term heat exposure. More on this data will be added to in the poster to be presented.

In summary, the use for solar panels is key to help prevent the negative effect of climate change. In desert like conditions, while there is plenty of sunshine, the negative effects of soling and temperature is not fully studied yet. Finding the optimum, angle and direction is key it get the peak performance of the panel and helping to mitigate some of these negative effects. Also studying the long-term effects of the temperature and soiling is important. Finally, knowing the negative effects can help researchers find new materials and solutions for solar cells for desert like environments.

[1] E. Agency, "Renewables Information," July 2021. [Online].

[2] T. National, "Road to Net Zero," 09 May 2019. [Online]

[3] O. Albadwawi et al., "Quantification of spectral losses of Natural soiling and detailed microstructural analysis of Dust collected from Different locations in Dubai, UAE," 2019 IEEE 46th Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2019, pp. 3115-3118, doi: 10.1109/PVSC40753.2019.8980937.

Figure 1