To address the decline in power generation efficiency and the shortened operational lifespan of photovoltaic (PV) modules caused by surface dust accumulation
this paper proposes an improved YOLOv5-based model for dust detection. The proposed model enhances the original YOLOv5 architecture by introducing multi-scale GS convolution modules and VoVGSCSP structures
incorporating the CBAM attention mechanism
and modifying the SPPF module to improve both accuracy and speed. Based on a sufficiently large and representative dataset
CLAHE
sharpening
and Gamma parameter adjustment are collaboratively applied to part of the dataset. An experimental platform was developed in PyCharm to implement and verify the improved model
enabling efficient detection of dust locations and regional dust accumulation on PV module surfaces. Experimental results show that the improved YOLOv5 model achieves 3.3 percentage points increase in @0.5∶0.95 over the baseline YOLOv5
while the FPS improves from 65.2 FPS to 68.3 FPS
demonstrating advantages in both accuracy and speed. This study develops a surface dust detection model for photovoltaic modules under varying illumination conditions
providing methodological support for operation and maintenance management and cleaning decision-making in photovoltaic power plants.
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