Use of renewable energy sources in New Zealand such as photovoltaic (PV) panels has been increasing over the last few years. The Thames energy group is planning to explore the possibility of using a more sustainable energy. Alkhaldi Mohammed, a Wintec student did a study to install 327 kw PVs system over the Thames hospital roof which has an area of 2950m,2 and another Wintec student Alnajrani Hassan, did a study to install 11064 KW PV systems with an area of 99576m2 to cover the needs of Thames domestic houses. However, with Thames being near the coast, and surrounded by forest, there were some environmental issues affecting the PV output, such as dust which accumulated from pollen and sea salt.udThis project was to maintain the PVs to generate power at high efficiency. The i7 cleaner robot which was initially designed to clean houses was studied and new software was developed to be able to efficiently work on PV panels. Then the robot structure will be developed by the mechanical team next semester so that it will be ready to use.udThe developed software reduced the cleaning time for a 1x2.20 meter panel from eight minutes to two minutes by setting a path on the surface of the PV panels for the robot, instead of just a semi random movement. Whereas the old software could clean 11 panels in 90 minutes, the new program can clean 37 panels in the same time.
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