Spatial Analysis and Characterization of Dust Particles Using Remotely-Sensed Data and Its Effects on Solar PV Power Production: Case of the Philippines

As solar radiation penetrates the atmosphere, a significant amount of energy is lost due to its interaction with atmospheric constituents including absorption and reflection by water vapor and air molecules. The said attenuation of energy impacts electric power production from solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Solar PV systems have become one of the widely used alternatives for electricity generation due to their advantages on scalability and promising solar cell conversion efficiency. However, these systems can be significantly affected by environmental factors including dust accumulation which decreases the amount of energy produced. This study aims to characterize dust particles in the Philippines in terms of particle size and amount of aerosols using remotely-sensed data estimated using daytime aerosol property data on Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) and Angstrom Exponent (AE), respectively, derived from Advanced Himawari Imager 8/9 (AHI-8/9) satellite data. Trend analysis was done to the mean AOT and AE for each month and for the whole timeline (2017-2021), decomposed using the AirRGB method. AHI-8/9 products were then compared to the retrieved Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) and Angstrom Exponent (α) from MODIS Terra satellite data. Results show that areas with relatively high estimated dust deposition (0.218 ≤ AOT ≤ 0.230) can be found in Eastern Visayas, Eastern Mindanao, and Western Luzon. Meanwhile, fine aerosol particles (0.80 ≤ AE ≤ 0.93) are dominant in Northern Luzon and Palawan while coarse aerosol particles (0.68 ≤ AE ≤ 0.70) are dominant in Mindanao. Lastly, the decrease in solar PV power output due to dust deposition was estimated at 20-30%. Results from this study can be a useful input in the development of a forecasting model for solar PV output power since dust accumulation on modules must be quantified and considered for its impact on the system’s output power. This study demonstrates the novelty of using AHI-8/9 aerosol property product as input to the AirRGB model instead of MODIS data, and its application to the estimation of the combined effects of dust and precipitation on solar PV production. For future work, analyzing the correlation between the RGB scenarios from AirRGB decomposition and socio-economic development can be considered.

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IEEE

Bauzon, M. D. A., Sotto, M., Cañete, J., Principe, J., & Masa, J. L., “Spatial Analysis and Characterization of Dust Particles using Remotely-sensed data and its Effects on Solar PV Power Production: Case of the Philippines,” in 43rd Asian Conference on Remote Sensing, Ulaanbaatar, Oct. 2022. Available: https://a-a-r-s.org/proceeding/ACRS2022/ACRS22_42.pdf

American Psychological Association 7th Edition

Bauzon, M. D. A., Sotto, M., Cañete, J., Principe, J., & Masa, J. L. (2022) Spatial Analysis and Characterization of Dust Particles using Remotely-sensed data and its Effects on Solar PV Power Production: Case of the Philippines. 43rd Asian Conference on Remote Sensing.