wamda.com - The word piezo (pee-ay-zo), derived from the Greek word piezein means press. For electromechanical engineers, the word evokes a process of connecting an advanced concoction of crystals that are housed in a paper-thin material to alternating electrical currents that cause the material to vibrate like the diaphragm in a speaker.

A rendering of nanocomposite piezoelectric material. (Image via Greenoptimistic.com)

The process is known as the Piezoelectric Effect. For entrepreneurs, Maher Maymoun and Tala Nassraween, piezoelectricity is the technology behind their company Solar PiezoClean, and they think it is the means by which MENA’s ballooning solar industry can begin to press back against one of the biggest threats to solar panel efficiency in the region: dust.

Dusty residue covers solar panels after a desert storm (Image via onlinecleaningsolutions.com.au)

The dust problem

Imagine a solar field, spread out glistening in the desert. As an example, the 50MW Solar PV Power Plant in Jordan’s Ma’an Governorate, that gets energy from sunlight using 34 power arrays (or sections of solar panels) that contain roughly 20,000 photovoltaic panels each. Now imagine a dust storm the size of the one that hit the Arabian Peninsula in April, in which ominous dust clouds swept across Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE and east to India and Pakistan, in just seven days. Dust storms like that can cover entire solar-fields, and leave in their wake, residue on the panels that reduce each panel’s efficiency up to 30 percent. According to Maymoun, the founder and CEO of Solar PiezoClean, “over time, the reduced efficiency of solar panels caused by dust interfering with the absorption of sunlight, can equate to nearly a 40 percent loss in a project’s capital investment, not to mention the added losses in society due to power disruptions.”