A study on the effect of surface coating of a Solar PV panel using Aloe vera gel

This study is done to analyze enhancement of the efficiency of the solar PV panels by coating them with natural substances like aloe vera gel. Aloe vera gel can reduce the reflection of sunlight and it provides a cooling effect when exposed to sunlight which can reduce the panel’s operating temperature. The experiment was carried out in two phases using four identical solar PV panels, three of which were coated in Aloe vera gel, while one remained uncoated as a reference. In all the sets of experiments, the coated panels demonstrated greater efficiency after six days of dust exposure compared to the uncoated reference panel, based on power output calculations. It was also observed that the total power output decreased for all the solar PV panels with increasing amount of dust accumulation in the panels. However, for the Aloe vera gel coated panels the power degradation was less even during the dust accumulation.