The efficiency of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels is greatly reduced by panel soiling and high temperatures. A mechanism for eliminating both of these sources of inefficiencies is presented by integrating solar PV generation with a compressed air system. High-pressure air can be stored and used to blow over the surface of PV panels, removing present dust and cooling the panels, increasing output power. A full-system mathematical model of the proposed system is presented, comprised of compressed air generation and storage, panel temperature, panel cleaning, and PV power generation. Simulation results indicate the benefit of employing compressed air for cleaning and cooling solar PV panels. For a fixed volume of compressed air, it is advantageous to blow air over the panels early in the day if the panel is soiled or when solar radiation is most abundant with the highest achievable flow rate if the panel is clean. These strategies have been shown to achieve the greatest energy captures for a single PV panel. When comparing the energy for air compression to the energy gain from cleaning a single PV over a two-week period, an energy ROI of 23.8 is determined. The system has the potential to eliminate the requirement for additional manual cleaning of solar PV panels.

Compressed air energy storage is a well-used technology for application in high voltage power systems, but researchers are also investing efforts to minimize the cost of this technology in medium and low voltage power systems. Integration of this energy storage requires a robust control of the power electronic converter to control the power injection due to the dynamic behavior of the system. The conventional linear control design requires a thorough knowledge of the system parameters, but the uncertain disturbances caused by the mechanical properties of the energy storage is neglected in the design and the system fails in presence of such instances. In this paper an adaptive control-based boost converter and sliding mode control-based three phase inverter for a grid integrated compressed air energy storage system of up to 1 kW has been presented that can mitigate any uncertain disturbances in the system without prior knowledge of the system parameters. The experimental results along with the simulation results are also presented to validate the efficiency of the system.