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Date:  Fri, December 05, 2025
Time:  10:00am - 12:00pm
Location:  Holmes Hall 389
Speaker:  Mohammad Rafi Ahmed, candidate for MS, advisor: Dr. Aaron Ohta

ECE Graduate Students: This will count towards your seminar credit.

Abstract

Dust accumulation on solar panels can reduce energy output by up to 50%, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions where conventional cleaning methods like water washing and brushing are inefficient, costly, or damaging to panel surfaces. This project presents a novel, non-contact, waterless electrostatic dust removal system that operates in two stages. First, a sharp needle electrode biased with high negative DC voltage creates a corona discharge that charges nearby dust particles with negative ions. Then, a positively charged metal plate is brought near the surface, attracting and removing the charged dust without touching the panel. Several electrode designs were tested, and the copper-coated conical electrode achieved the highest dust removal efficiency of 82.6%. The system successfully restored up to 97% of the original power output of dust-covered PV cells, demonstrating its strong potential as a sustainable, low-cost, and scalable cleaning solution for solar farms in resource-limited environments.

Biography

Mohammad Rafi Ahmed is an M.S. candidate in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Qatar University in 2021. His current research focuses on dust cleaning using Corona Discharge.