## 1 Introduction  
Over the past few years, the world of science and industry has focused a great deal of attention on coatings as structural and functional materials. Transparent coatings are of particular interest because of their multitude of applications. These coatings can be used on windows, car windows, aircraft subcomponents, skyscraper roofs, glass facades, and photovoltaic modules [1, 2, 3]. The photovoltaic technology is one of the most popular and growing means for the production of renewable energy. The technology converts sunlight directly into electricity, Photovoltaics finds a variety of applications such as in solar farms [4], systems to supply power in space [5], remote locations [6], buildings [7], etc. In 2020, there was a record increase of 23% in power generation from solar photovoltaic compared to 2019, translating into a 156 TWh increase in power generation [8, 9]. As the market grows, there are new requirements for photovoltaic installations to be increasingly efficient and reliable. However, the performance of photovoltaic panels is directly affected by external atmospheric factors such as dust, pollution, UV radiation, snow, ice, and frost. The accumulation of pollutants on the surface of photovoltaic modules in the form of dust or sediment can reduce their efficiency and power output by up to several percent points. It is estimated that the decrease in output for contaminants with a thickness of 1 \(\upmu\)m can be about 10% and for dust with a thickness of 3 \(\upmu\)m can be up to 25% [10]. In addition, during winter and in cold regions, snow and ice are other obstacles to maintaining the high efficiency of photovoltaic power generation. The accumulation of snow or frost on installations usually results in a complete halt of power production [11]. The current methods of removing snow from PV installations include manual methods causing energy consumption and the use of polluting de-icing chemicals. However, the chemicals contribute to environmental pollution, and the manual labor includes risk factors of personal injury and the risk of damaging the PV module surfaces with sundry tools [12]. In recent years, a proposed strategy with great potential to deal with surface icing is the use of passive icephobic coatings. In the literature, studies of icephobicity focus on the low ice adhesion strength, the longest possible freezing time for water droplets, and the prevention of ice accumulation. In addition to the aforementioned icephobicity, coatings for photovoltaic panels should also exhibit self-cleaning properties (high value of the water contact angle and low value of the roll-off angle) and durability of their properties over time, while maintaining the required optical properties (transmittance and reflectance) [13]. The reasons limiting the use of durable, transparent coatings with self-cleaning and icephobic properties in industrial practice are their high manufacturing cost, difficulties in production scalability, and susceptibility to various types of degradation such as thermal and UV damage [14; 15]. None of the solutions currently known from the literature is fully effective in preventing the fouling and icing of photovoltaic panels over the long term. Epoxy resins and their hybrids are among the most popular resins used. In the available literature, only a few works about transparent coatings based on epoxy resins that exhibit durable self-cleaning and icephobic properties can be found. In [16], an epoxy surface water contact angle of 175\({}^{\circ}\) was obtained, but the authors did not perform optical measurements of the investigated coatings. In 2017, [PERSON] et al. [17] presented very promising results on transparent epoxy coatings with superhydrophobic and self-cleaning properties. The work detailed the influence of various factors on the durability of the water contact angle. Unfortunately, the effect of the applied coating modifications on the optical and icephobic properties was not presented. [PERSON] et al.