The waterless cleaning robot by Nomadd ‘crawls’ from one solar panel
to another, removing accumulated sand and dust while in the process
saving thousands of man hours and countless more litres of water.
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Robot cleaner could shine
light on solar power problems
Martin Croucher
The National
DUBAI // Despite year-round sunlight, plans to make solar power a primary energy source in the UAE are hindered by the all-pervasive dust in the atmosphere whipped up from the desert.
A layer of sand renders solar panels useless, regardless of how bright, and how long, the sun shines each day. But one company could have the solution to the Emirate’s green energy problems in the form of a specially designed cleaning robot.
Nomadd has designed a durable, waterless cleaning robot that “crawls” from one solar panel to another, saving thousands of man hours and countless more litres of water.
Already the firm, which is based in Saudi Arabia, is in talks with several upcoming projects in the region, including Dubai.
Georg Eitelhuber, acting chief executive, was a professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust), when he saw for himself what happened to solar panels when they were caught in a dust storm.
“Within a few hours they were filthy,” he said. “I realised that if there was to be a growth in solar in the Middle East, this would have to be one of the key problems that would be solved.”
. . .
“If a dust storm hits you can lose 50 per cent of the performance of the array in just two hours,” he said. “And that will stay at 50 per cent until you clean it. If you can’t clean 10,000 football fields of solar cells in a day, you lose a huge amount of output, which drastically affects your end-of-year bottom-line profit.
. . .
A single robot can crawl over a 400-metre row of conjoined solar panels, completing a wash of that size in about 30 minutes.
Of all the challenges Mr Eitelhuber had to overcome, designing a robot that could withstand the harsh desert environment was the most difficult. He quickly found that similar devices used in the US and Europe just would not cut it.
The finished design looks like a big, unlovely block. But that was the intention, Mr Eitelhuber said.
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