Reducing the particulates that settle on solar cells might slow their degradation, produce 10.3 TWh.

[NNadir]

Here's a pretty delusional paper in a scientific journal: Source Sector Mitigation of Solar Energy Generation Losses Attributable to Particulate Matter Pollution Fei Yao and Paul I. Palmer Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (12), 8619-8628

It begins with the lie that solar energy is free, except that it's expensive as hell - as power rates in Germany show - when the sun isn't shining, since it requires redundant systems and wired infrastructure to do anything.

Our harnessing energy provided for free by the sun has a low environmental footprint and will therefore play a role in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases and mitigating the harmful impacts of climate change. (1,2) A variety of technologies convert sunlight to usable electricity, but currently the most common approach is to use solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. The past decade (2011 to 2020) has seen an enormous increase in the worldwide solar PV installed capacity, from 72 to 707 GW. (3) Solar PV is expected to dominate growth in the renewable energy sector for the foreseeable future. (4) However, particulate matter (PM), a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets suspended in the air, represents a major barrier to maximizing the performance of solar PV technologies and therefore compromises our ability to generate clean energy. Atmospheric PM scatters and absorbs the solar radiation that would otherwise reach the solar panels. (5−7) PM deposited on the solar panels further impedes the solar radiation being received by the PV semiconductor material. (8−10)

There's the confusion between power and energy, the misrepresentation of what solar energy provides by citing peak power rather than energy. 707 "GW" sounds impressive until one does some rudimentary calculations. It's widely reported, and has been known by many people, that a period of time known as "night" exists. If 707 GW of power were available for 365.25 days/year, 86400 seconds per day (24 hours) then the output of 707 GW would be in units of energy, not power, 22.3 Exajoules of energy, but since the sun goes down, because the sun is rarely fixed in the sky except in rather absurd Bible stories, the actual capacity utilization - I'm being generous - is 25% in ideal places where the weather isn't too bad. This works out to 5.5 Exajoules on a planet that now uses roughly 600 Exajoules per year. This miserable result comes after 50 years of wild cheering and the expenditure of trillions of dollars.

The authors calculate however, if, by magic we could make air pollution just go away using our wonderful solar energy infrastructure, or at least, import poor people to walk through our growing solar deserts with bottles of Windex and paper towels, our solar infrastructure could produce (gasp) another 10.4 TWh - now they use a derived unit of energy - in addition to the trivial and useless amounts we now derive from this fantasy that has failed to address climate change.

How much energy is 10.4 TWh? It's 0.0371 EJ. The fractional amount of energy produced compared to 600 EJ consumed each year (and rising) is 0.0000618. Let's make it more impressive by using "percent talk, multiplying by 100. It works out to 0.00618%.

Unfortunately in places like Germany, "reliance" (or the pretense of reliance) on solar energy has led to the increased use of coal, which is a major contributor to particulate matter, in fact, the particulate matter is the chief means by which burning coal kills people, not the only mechanism, but the primary one.

Nevertheless, Germany probably should import some poor people with bottles of Windex and paper towels. Otherwise they might look foolish.

The world has gone insane.