This was the first SAM MENA event in a geographical area well-known for its oil but nowadays also for massive solar energy parks. The people attending the conference flew in from many countries. From the MENA region, but also from Europe and Asia. All looking to share and discuss local opportunities and challenges and more importantly to be involved in the network and building the foundation for future cooperation in solar energy.
The MENA region is well known for extra challenges when it comes to local permits, subsidies, PPA's and finding reliable partners to engineer, build and maintain the solar parks. Matters are improving though as projects are also changing from being subsidy dependant to full blown commercial projects on a mega scale. Many giga Watt, consisting of large solar parks combined with smaller ones, enable whole cities and manufacturing plants to become "energy neutral".
Soiling one of the challenges in MENA
An extra challenge in this dry area of course is soiling. And from what we learned, even though it looks apparent, it not always taken into account or dealt with properly. Currently, many O&M contracts just state the cleaning frequency, independent from the actual losses caused by the soiling and the balance between cleaning costs and extra revenue due to cleaning.
At Solar Asset Management MENA the shared knowledge and a panel discussion with experts in measuring, cleaning and coating resulted in a lot of attention for our DustIQ Soiling Measurement System. The clever design allows for maintenance free, 24-7 soiling measurements for many, many years. The DustIQ output combined with local knowledge of the PV park characteristics makes it possible to the see the soiling trend, anticipate and plan economically sensible cleaning interventions. And in the end, see the effectiveness of the cleaning.
All in all, it was an event well worth visiting and on my agenda for next year for sure.
More information in DustIQ
For more information on DustIQ please visit our dedicated webpage at www.kippzonen.com/DustIQ where you can find the latest information, publications, references and downloads.
Blog by Donald van Velsen, Product Manager at Kipp & Zonen