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The large and necessary diffusion of huge solar plants in extra urban areas implies the adoption of maintenance strategies especially where human intervention would require high costs and logistic problems. Animal dejections like bird droppings and agricultural sprays are environmental agents able to significantly decrease light absorption and, in some cases, cause serious damage to the electric conversion systems in a photovoltaic panel. In this work, the performance of a superhydrophobic (SH) coating in terms of durable self-cleaning properties and transparency has been studied in the presence of commercial and simulated contaminants on glass reference and solar panel surfaces. Wettability studies have been carried out both in static and dynamic conditions in order to compare the compositional effect of commercial liquids used as fertilizers or pesticides and molecules like pancreatin as model substances simulating bird droppings. From these studies, it can be observed that the superhydrophobic coating, independently from the surface where it is applied, is able to repel water and substances used such as fertilizers or pesticides and substances simulating bird droppings, maintaining its properties and transparency. This kind of approach can provide information to design suitable spray formulations without the above-mentioned drawbacks to be used in natural environment areas and agrosolar plants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work the authors review the recent literature related to new solutions to prepare coatings with amphiphobic properties in order to provide self-maintaining systems able to limit the human intervention especially in large plants or harsh environments or, generally speaking, to keep the original functionalities of a solar module. Amphiphobic coatings match the requirements preventing both water and oil based pollutants from dust accumulation to natural and urban aerosols, from agriculture dispersions to bird droppings. The increasing need of renewable energy requires this step to be seriously faced with the aim to increase the yield and decrease the modules degradation. Still many issues have to be overcome and here we focus on surface aspects of aging and possible maintenance of the optical features of a solar panel. Unlabelled Image • Environmental factors, natural and anthropic, affecting solar panels efficiency. • Self cleaning amphiphobic coatings reviewed according to this specific application. • Required high transmittance coating features are evidenced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]