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A leading renewable energy corporation operating 45+ solar
energy farms across the world
Users:
VP of Innovation, Design Engineers, Research and Development
Background
The solar energy market has grown at an exponential rate in
recent years, with the industry experiencing a rapid cost decline
of 85% in the past decade alone1. Although solar energy is
increasingly accessible, the industry still faces challenges and
growing pains. A surprisingly tricky problem is impacting the
conversion of solar energy across the globe: dust on the panels.
Referred to in the industry as solar panel "soiling", solar farms
in all regions of the world are experiencing this common issue.
Photovoltaic (PV) power generation is inhibited by dust and
pollution particles accumulating on the surfaces of the panels,
leading to radiation transmission losses of 2-50% depending on the
region in which the solar farm is located2. In 2019, the Fraunhofer
Center for Silicon Photovoltaics calculated that global soiling
transmission losses are 3-4%, which will cost the world a predicted
$4.1-7.2 billion in 20233.
Although the answer may seem simple - to clean the panels - this
solution is costly in terms of:
Energy spent to power solar panel cleaning
equipment. Since panels cool down at night and collect dew in the
morning, dust and other air pollutants go through a process of
cementation when attaching to the surfaces of the panels, making it
difficult to clear without high-powered robotic cleaning equipment.
This equipment can be expensive in terms of energy and money, and
the cleaning process itself can be harmful to the environment.
Money - the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory in Colorado, US estimates that "a one-time cleaning for
a 10-megawatt solar farm—which provides enough electricity to
power 2,000 homes for a day—can cost an estimated $5,000"4. If
a 10MW farm cleaned the panels once per month, they would need to
budget $60k annually.
As air quality worsens due to pollution and climate change, some
regions experience higher transmission losses than others. Our
client owns and operates over 45 solar farms with thousands of
panels, located in very humid regions of the world with
considerable amounts of dust and pollutants in the air. The
engineering team needed to find a way to keep the panels from
becoming covered in sticky dust to improve the energy conversion
rate of their solar farms. They turned to Goldfire, an
S&P product they relied on consistently for things like solar
panel layout, installation, and other tasks, to see if it could
help them here as well.
Pain Points
The VP of Innovation tasked the engineering team with finding
solutions across disciplines, specifically looking at solutions
found in nature. The team set out to look for water-repellent
properties that could be reproduced in a laboratory and fitted to
the conditions of their solar panel systems.
They came to S&P Global Engineering Solutions
with the following challenges:
To find a solution in nature that they could mimic in their
design; this is important to their company.
Finding relevant information was time-consuming and
unsuccessful. The team was manually searching for information,
reading through documents one by one to find an answer.
A lack of specialized expertise in scientific fields like
biotechnology, botany, and biomimicry made it difficult to know
where to look for the answer.
Traditional search engines would output a list with keywords
based on the search query, but nothing in context.
There was a high probability the team would miss something
important due to the above considerations.
Solution
Equipped with Goldfire's cognitive search abilities, the team
turned to the world of plants to find an answer. They surfaced
relevant pieces of information across multiple engineering
disciplines and scientific industries. Within 2 days, Goldfire
pinpointed a key finding in a 2019 article discussing
superhydrophobic surfaces, which led the team to the answer they
needed. In this publication, the authors spoke about the ability
for the lotus leaf to self-clean, shedding water droplets, dirt,
and other particles due to the multi-scaled waxy bumps on its
leaves. This is known as the "lotus effect".
The team then located a second paper from 2015 describing a
super hydrophobic transparent coating that could be used as a paint
on cars, marine equipment, wind turbines - and solar panels. Based
on the chemical properties of the lotus plant, a manufacturer had
developed this superhydrophobic coating that mimicked the lotus
effect, creating a self-cleaning mechanism for whatever surface it
was used on. When applied to a solar panel, the water droplets and
dust particles would simply roll off the panel, rather than
attaching and cementing to the surface.
Our client surfaced this research using Goldfire, leveraging
knowledge that had formed over billions of years in nature toward a
new innovation in alternative energy and renewable energy.
Goldfire is powered by state-of-the-art machine
learning and natural language processing (NLP) technologies, which
enable it to connect information across industries and disciplines
- much like the way a human brain makes cognitive connections.
Goldfire's AI powered cognitive search leads the user to the
answer. It goes beyond a list of key words, connecting the dots
between disparate sets of knowledge based on context and semantics,
sifting through information and pulling out relevant materials like
the human brain would.
Machine learning and natural language processing analyzes the
search in context in 6 different languages, providing answers and
relevant knowledge across industries.
Indexing of scientific and technical publications around the
world, across industries, and across engineering disciplines makes
it easier and less time consuming for users to find the answers
they seek.
Key Benefits
Our client surfaced the answer they needed within 2 days of
starting their search. Without Goldfire, the answer would have
taken them weeks or months to find.
Through Goldfire's indexed patents, the research team was able
to locate a manufacturer of the paint mimicking the lotus effect
and passed this information along to their product team, who could
then apply the knowledge to their existing products.
Identified a self-cleaning method found in nature that could be
applied to their challenge
Located a manufacturer of the super hydrophobic coating,
streamlining their process to solve the problem and apply a
solution to their existing product
Saved weeks of engineering time that could be applied to other
challenges, like the laying out of solar farms and reducing time to
value for their new farm locations
Tested and verified a reliable new method of conducting
research with Goldfire, which they could apply to other innovative
projects and renewable energy product lines
Saved valuable time, energy, and money by leveraging the power
of AI with S&P Global Engineering Solutions
1 2022 Renewable Energy Industry Outlook. Deloitte, Mar
2022.
2 Power loss due to soiling on solar panel: A review.
Maghami et al, Universiti Putra Malaysia, June 2016.
3 Techno-Economic Assessment of Soiling Losses and Mitigation
Strategies for Solar Power Generation. Ilse et. al, Fraunhofer
Center for Silicon Photovoltaics CSP, Sept 2019.
4 Scientists Studying Solar Try Solving a Dusty Problem.
National Renewable Energy Lab, Apr 2021.
