One thing is true about photovoltaic solar panels: they aren’t really a secret. You can even see them from outer space, and there is no mistaking what they are.
This month NASA featured images of the Bhadla Solar Park in northwest India [1]. It’s pretty obvious in the imagery!
As the article notes, this region is hot, dry, and very sunny. It’s a hard place to live, but a pretty good place to collect solar power. And Bhadla collects a lot of sun from almost 6 thousand hectares, more than 2 gigawatts of electricity. This is one of the largest solar farms in the world.
This is a dry, dusty place, so the solar panels tend to get coated with dust which cuts production. Maintenance crews have to continuously clean the panels. It is not surprising that they are moving to using robots to do a lot of the routine cleaning. This is a great use case for robots: the task is routine, the panels don’t move or change, and there is plenty of electricity to recharge the robots.
- Adam Voiland, The Thar desert’s abundance of open space and sunshine make it an ideal place for solar power, in NASA Earth Observatory – Image of the Day, February 19, 2022. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/149442/soaking-up-sun-in-the-thar-desert
Robert McGrath's Blog 