A tiny layer of dust can drastically affect the light-harvesting ability of solar cells – just a few grams per square metre can cut the efficiency in half
It is really dusty in Texas, and solar panels probably would have to be cleaned every day to keep them working close to capacity. Suppose that one person could clean 100 solar panels a day.
Texas could employ 20 million solar panel cleaners! Workers from Juarez are used to working for about $25/day, so they could probably sneak 20 million illegals across the border and keep the panels clean for only $165 billion per year.
I wonder how much water it would take. Or are they just going to be hand wiping these panels?
They could just pee on the panels. http://news.discovery.com/earth/urine-sewage-water-supply-recycling-drought-110805.html#mkcpgn=fbnws1
Well, now, I wonder how much beer it would take to get an illegal to pee on, and then wipe down his 100 panels a day.
I recall recently seeing a photo of an array of solar panels in Germany that were adorned with dust wiping weeds. So no, there won’t be a need to employ people, dust wiping weeds will do it and they don’t need to be planted, they appear all by themselves.
No, they were Triffids. Solar panels attract Triffids….and Hippies
Gonna need them beer swilling wiping aliens here too.
The former Bell Labs at Murray Hill
http://www.nj-aerial.com/photos/solar-panel-aerial-photos/
Sad part is that WAS a beautiful lawn and was often employed by some of the legal
foreign workers as a cricket pitch.
No need for manual labour – a solar panel can generate just enough electricity to power a fan able to keep a solar panel free of dust.
Simple!
You would need to supply outside energy to control the electronics that control the fan!
“You would need to supply outside energy to control the electronics that control the fan!”
No problem. Just build more solar panels.
It would be more efficient to put those solar panal cleaners in treadmills attached to generators to power the windmills, when the wind is not blowing, to blow the dust off the solar panels. Or have we lost the plot?
Solar panels start to lose efficiency from day one due to degradation of materials. Whereas coal fired plants become more efficient as time goes by. Check out atomized refined coal…
http://polymontana.com/2011/07/08/atomized-refined-coal-will-change-your-future/
great reading, thanks!
Hey Steven, you’re missing the liberal economics here…
Cleaning solar panels will count as green jobs. In addition, they’ll probably unionize meaning another steady stream of contributions to the DNC. Now if they become public sector solar panel cleaners, they’ll probably end up making over 50K/year and after 20 years, be able to retire at 90% of the last 3 years of pay (something like what is done here in CA) and collect both retirement and free healthcare benefits for the rest of their lives.