CORDIS OpenAire Datacite Sygma UnpayWall Crossref Microsoft Academic Graph Archivio della ricerca- Università di Roma La Sapienza arXiv.org e-Print Archive European Union Open Data Portal https://iris.uniroma1.it/bitstream/11573/1625605/3/Fernandez-Solas_Design_Post-print_2020.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2020.10.028 Solar Energy Open Access 2020-11-06 2020-01-01 2022-03-29 Nowadays, photovoltaic (PV) technology has reached a high level of maturity in terms of module efficiency and cost competitiveness in comparison with other energy technologies. As PV has achieved high levels of deployment, the development of devices that can help to reduce PV operation and maintenance costs has become a priority. Soiling can be cause of significant losses in certain PV plants and its detection has become essential to ensure a correct mitigation. For this reason, accurate and low-cost monitoring devices are needed. While soiling stations have been traditionally employed to measure the impact of soiling, their high cost and maintenance have led to the development of innovative low-cost optical sensors, such as the device presented in this work and named 'DUSST' (Detector Unit for Soiling Spectral Transmittance). The thermal characterization of the components of DUSST and the methodology used to predict soiling transmittance losses are presented in this study. The results show that the losses can be predicted with an error lower than 1.4%. The method has been verified with an experimental campaign with naturally soiled coupons exposed outdoors in Ja��n, Spain. monitoring; reliability; sensor; soiling; thermal characterization; transmittance losses 0211 other engineering and technologies 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering FOS: Physical sciences Physics - Applied Physics Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) 02 engineering and technology 7. Clean energy Fernández-Solas, Álvaro, Micheli, Leonardo, Muller, Matthew, Almonacid, Florencia, Fernández, Eduardo F., 2020-11-01 journalpaper Nowadays, photovoltaic (PV) technology has reached a high level of maturity in terms of module efficiency and cost competitiveness in comparison with other energy technologies. As PV has achieved high levels of deployment, the development of devices that can help to reduce PV operation and maintenance costs has become a priority. Soiling can be cause of significant losses in certain PV plants and its detection has become essential to ensure a correct mitigation. For this reason, accurate and low-cost monitoring devices are needed. While soiling stations have been traditionally employed to measure the impact of soiling, their high cost and maintenance have led to the development of innovative low-cost optical sensors, such as the device presented in this work and named 'DUSST' (Detector Unit for Soiling Spectral Transmittance). The thermal characterization of the components of DUSST and the methodology used to predict soiling transmittance losses are presented in this study. The results show that the losses can be predicted with an error lower than 1.4%. The method has been verified with an experimental campaign with naturally soiled coupons exposed outdoors in Ja��n, Spain. Design, characterization and indoor validation of the optical soiling detector “DUSST” 10.1016/j.solener.2020.10.028