Structural Analysis of Solar Panel Cleaning Robotic Arm

The efficiency of solar photovoltaic (SPV) panels depends upon the amount of solar irradiance and spectral content. SPV panels are being widely used because of their economic and environmental merits. The performance of SPV panels gets degraded due to factors like air pollution, bird droppings, dust, snow accumulation, etc. An automatic and integrated solar panel cleaning robotic arm (SPCRA) with four-degrees of freedom has been designed to overcome the above factors. The arm has two prismatic and two revolute joints. SPCRA has a unique end effector with a water sprinkler, air blower and a wiper installed as a single unit on it. Few traits like anti-interloped design, automated grid cleaning mechanism, efficient algorithm, all-weather cleaning support, and plug-n-play strategy with optimum costs make it a versatile system for cleaning the SPV panels.