Assessing soiling risk across different climatic zones

Iberdrola, one of the world’s largest renewable energy companies, partnered with PVRADAR to validate soiling models and define a robust strategy for managing soiling risks across their global PV portfolio. Faced with the challenge of quantifying soiling-related energy losses across 15 sites in diverse climatic zones — from arid, dusty environments to temperate regions — Iberdrola aimed to ensure that soiling and snow risk assessments were grounded in validated, data-driven models.

At Iberdrola, optimizing the performance of our PV plants is essential. PVRADAR’s assessment helped us evaluate soiling and snow losses more accurately, thus contributing to the profitability of our projects.

Esther Gomez Ruiz

Head of Studies and Modeling, Global Engineering

Systematic benchmarking and validation of soiling models

Recognizing the need for confidence in the models used, Iberdrola tasked PVRADAR with a systematic benchmark of widely applied soiling models, including both proprietary and published approaches and focusing on the complex interactions between soiling, rainfall, snowfall and plant design.

Comparison of five different soiling models for a location in Spain.

The comparison provided Iberdrola with a clear understanding of the assumptions and limitations behind each model, and guidance on which approaches are best suited for different climates and site types — forming the basis for an internal modeling workflow.

Enabling data-driven, portfolio-wide soiling risk assessment

To ensure transparency and practical usability, PVRADAR provided a customized version of its web application for soiling assessment and cleaning optimization, including five different soiling models as well as local rainfall data for efficient comparison. All validated models were applied across Iberdrola’s 15 project sites.

Screenshot of the PVRADAR DEMO platform, displaying hypothetical projects on a map. Marker colors indicate the type of analysis performed: blue for soiling assessment and cleaning optimization, white for snow loss estimation, and red for albedo gain optimization.

The integration of results into the PVRADAR web application ensures Iberdrola’s teams across engineering, O&M, and asset management can consistently access and analyze soiling risks — with the flexibility to adapt as new data becomes available or site conditions evolve.

Validating soiling models against measured data and applying them consistently across a portfolio is essential to making reliable, cost-effective decisions about cleaning and O&M. With this project, Iberdrola has established a solid foundation for managing soiling risks globally.

Thore Müller

CEO

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