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Is the Air Too Polluted for Outdoor Activities? Check by Using Your Photovoltaic System as an Air-Quality Monitoring Device

Over the past few decades, the concentrating photovoltaic systems, a source of clean and renewable energy, often fully integrated into the roof structure, have been commonly installed on private houses and public buildings. The purpose of those panels is to transform the incoming solar radiation int...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Lolli, Simone
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8512004/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34640662
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21196342
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author Lolli, Simone
author_facet Lolli, Simone
author_sort Lolli, Simone
collection PubMed
description Over the past few decades, the concentrating photovoltaic systems, a source of clean and renewable energy, often fully integrated into the roof structure, have been commonly installed on private houses and public buildings. The purpose of those panels is to transform the incoming solar radiation into electricity thanks to the photovoltaic effect. The produced electric power is affected, in the first instance, by the solar panel efficiency and its technical characteristics, but it is also strictly dependent on site elevation, the meteorological conditions and on the presence of the atmospheric constituents, i.e., clouds, hydrometeors, gas molecules and sub-micron-sized particles suspended in the atmosphere that can scatter and absorb the incoming shortwave solar radiation. The Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is an adimensional wavelength-dependent atmospheric column variable that accounts for aerosol concentration. AOD can be used as a proxy to evaluate the concentration of surface particulate matter and atmospheric column turbidity, which in turn affects the solar panel energy production. In this manuscript, a new technique is developed to retrieve the AOD at 550 nm through an iterative process: the atmospheric optical depth, incremented in steps of 0.01, is used as input together with the direct and diffuse radiation fluxes computed by Fu–Liou–Gu Radiative Transfer Model, to forecast the produced electric energy by a photovoltaic panel through a simple model. The process will stop at that AOD value (at 550 nm), for which the forecast electric power will match the real produced electric power by the photovoltaic panel within a previously defined threshold. This proof of concept is the first step of a wider project that aims to develop a user-friendly smartphone application where photovoltaic panel owners, once downloaded it on a voluntary basis, can turn their photovoltaic system into a sunphotometer to continuously retrieve the AOD, and more importantly, to monitor the air quality and detect strong air pollution episodes that pose a threat for population health.
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spelling pubmed-85120042021-10-14 Is the Air Too Polluted for Outdoor Activities? Check by Using Your Photovoltaic System as an Air-Quality Monitoring Device Lolli, Simone Sensors (Basel) Article Over the past few decades, the concentrating photovoltaic systems, a source of clean and renewable energy, often fully integrated into the roof structure, have been commonly installed on private houses and public buildings. The purpose of those panels is to transform the incoming solar radiation into electricity thanks to the photovoltaic effect. The produced electric power is affected, in the first instance, by the solar panel efficiency and its technical characteristics, but it is also strictly dependent on site elevation, the meteorological conditions and on the presence of the atmospheric constituents, i.e., clouds, hydrometeors, gas molecules and sub-micron-sized particles suspended in the atmosphere that can scatter and absorb the incoming shortwave solar radiation. The Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is an adimensional wavelength-dependent atmospheric column variable that accounts for aerosol concentration. AOD can be used as a proxy to evaluate the concentration of surface particulate matter and atmospheric column turbidity, which in turn affects the solar panel energy production. In this manuscript, a new technique is developed to retrieve the AOD at 550 nm through an iterative process: the atmospheric optical depth, incremented in steps of 0.01, is used as input together with the direct and diffuse radiation fluxes computed by Fu–Liou–Gu Radiative Transfer Model, to forecast the produced electric energy by a photovoltaic panel through a simple model. The process will stop at that AOD value (at 550 nm), for which the forecast electric power will match the real produced electric power by the photovoltaic panel within a previously defined threshold. This proof of concept is the first step of a wider project that aims to develop a user-friendly smartphone application where photovoltaic panel owners, once downloaded it on a voluntary basis, can turn their photovoltaic system into a sunphotometer to continuously retrieve the AOD, and more importantly, to monitor the air quality and detect strong air pollution episodes that pose a threat for population health. MDPI 2021-09-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8512004/ /pubmed/34640662 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21196342 Text en © 2021 by the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Lolli, Simone
Is the Air Too Polluted for Outdoor Activities? Check by Using Your Photovoltaic System as an Air-Quality Monitoring Device
title Is the Air Too Polluted for Outdoor Activities? Check by Using Your Photovoltaic System as an Air-Quality Monitoring Device
title_full Is the Air Too Polluted for Outdoor Activities? Check by Using Your Photovoltaic System as an Air-Quality Monitoring Device
title_fullStr Is the Air Too Polluted for Outdoor Activities? Check by Using Your Photovoltaic System as an Air-Quality Monitoring Device
title_full_unstemmed Is the Air Too Polluted for Outdoor Activities? Check by Using Your Photovoltaic System as an Air-Quality Monitoring Device
title_short Is the Air Too Polluted for Outdoor Activities? Check by Using Your Photovoltaic System as an Air-Quality Monitoring Device
title_sort is the air too polluted for outdoor activities? check by using your photovoltaic system as an air-quality monitoring device
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8512004/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34640662
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s21196342
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