BUSINESS BRIEF

Thousands of commercial buildings are installing solar panels on their rooftop. Solar plants of capacities as high as 4 Megawatts are being installed on a single roof, producing more than 50 lakhs electricity units each year.
Being outdoors the solar panels are exposed to dust, pollution, bird droppings resulting in an efficiency drop called “soiling loss”. It can account for more than 4000 USD worth of electricity loss in a year. The rooftops are harder to access, the current method of manual cleaning with water is resource and cost extensive.
Operating a solar plant at its peak efficiency remains a challenge. The cleaning cost accounts for more than 50% of the total operational cost of a solar plant. With the rising labour cost and raising water scarcity, the current methods are not sustainable.
The global commercial and industrial solar rooftop market reached 80 Gigawatts in 2020. The soiling loss accounted to more than 3000 crores in 2020, annual cleaning cost for the same was about 6000 crores. India C&I solar rooftop capacity is about 5 gigawatts for which the annual cleaning market is 300 Crores.