Self-cleaning solar streetlights and the cost of soiling

Until now, cleaning the panel on a solar streetlight meant sending a crew. Clodesun presents an integrated solar luminaire with self-cleaning, shown in a video by The Energy Shift: a bar travels across the module on top of the fixture. Performance and lifetime of the mechanism are the company's description.

The size of the problem is measured. The IEA-PVPS report T13-21:2022, published in January 2023, puts soiling losses at 3% to 5% of annual global PV output, costing in the order of 3 to 5 billion euros in O&M, cleaning or capital. It lists cleaning robots among mitigations, with their own maintenance.

In street lighting the panel is small and scattered, and every visit means travel. Self-cleaning swaps visits for a moving part exposed to weather. The numbers work when the mechanism lasts as long as battery and luminaire.

Self-cleaning cuts routine visits. The maintenance contract then has to cover the bar.