Dirt is not a minor inconvenience in energy and construction. It is a quantified operational cost.
Solar panel efficiency losses from soiling, the accumulation of dust, pollen, bird droppings, and airborne particulates, are estimated to reduce energy output by between 1% and 25% depending on location and cleaning frequency. In the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and Australia, losses at the higher end of that range are common without aggressive cleaning programmes. At utility scale, a 10% efficiency reduction across a large solar farm is a material financial loss, repeated every year.
Cleaning is the conventional response, and it is expensive. Utility-scale arrays require water, labour or automated equipment, and planned downtime. In water-stressed regions, cleaning water competes directly with agricultural and municipal use. The operational economics push operators toward longer intervals between cleaning events, which allows efficiency losses to compound.
The same basic problem, surfaces that accumulate contamination and require periodic cleaning to restore performance, applies to wind turbine blades, building facades, and public infrastructure. The scale is different. The underlying physics is the same.
Nanize polysilazane coatings address the contamination accumulation problem at the surface level. Jerry Stokes, Chief Commercial Officer at Nanize, who built a $2 billion revenue portfolio at Suntech across 30 years in solar and batteries, has identified renewable energy as one of the highest-priority application areas. The performance case is direct: a coated module soils at a lower rate, sheds soiling more readily when it rains, and requires less frequent cleaning to maintain output. Havard Lillebo, CFO and co-founder, has cited the renewable energy and construction sectors as two of the clearest commercial opportunities in the Nanize pipeline, given the scale of infrastructure already deployed and the maintenance cost compounding over asset lifespans.
How the Coating Works on Solar Glass
Nanize polysilazane coatings produce surfaces with high hydrophobicity. On a hydrophobic surface, water beads rather than sheets. Beading water picks up loose particulates as it runs off, carrying them away rather than leaving them behind when the water evaporates. Dirt that has not chemically bonded to the surface is removed by normal rainfall without mechanical intervention.
On a surface with very low friction, the adhesion of sticky soiling agents is reduced from the start. Pollen, one of the most persistent soiling types due to its surface chemistry, adheres less readily to low-friction polysilazane than to bare glass. The coating does not prevent soiling entirely, but it slows accumulation and makes removal easier.
The practical outcome is an extended interval between required cleaning events. Fewer cleaning cycles per year means lower water consumption, lower labour and equipment costs, and fewer planned downtime events. Across a large installation over a 25-year asset life, those reductions accumulate into significant operational savings.
Wind Turbine Blades: Surface Condition and Output
Wind turbine blade performance is sensitive to surface roughness. Insect debris on leading edges creates surface irregularities that increase aerodynamic drag and reduce energy capture at a given wind speed. Ice accumulation in cold climates is a more acute version of the same problem. Blade erosion from rain and particulate impact progressively degrades surface quality over time.
Nanize’s low coefficient of friction reduces the adhesion strength of insect residue and ice on blade surfaces. Contamination that adheres less strongly is more readily removed by rain or de-icing events. The durability of the coating, achieved through dense crosslinking and covalent bonding to the blade substrate, means it maintains its properties across multiple years of rain, UV, temperature cycling, and high-speed airflow. A coating that erodes within one season delivers no long-term value. A coating that holds over years of operating conditions does.
Buildings: The Graffiti and Soiling Economics
Building facade maintenance is a cost that compounds invisibly over decades. Pressure washing, graffiti removal, corrosion treatment on steel and aluminium cladding, and periodic recoating: for large commercial buildings, the cumulative maintenance cost over a 30-year service life is substantial. It also requires scaffold access, tenant notification, and planned access windows that disrupt building operations.
Spray paint adheres to surfaces through mechanical keying, where paint penetrates surface pores and hardens, and through chemical bonding with the substrate. On a smooth, dense, low-surface-energy Nanize-coated surface, both mechanisms are impaired. Paint applied to a coated panel does not penetrate. Removal by solvent or pressure wash is more complete, leaves less residue, and does not progressively damage the coating the way repeated aggressive removal degrades unprotected metal or paint.
Steel and aluminium building panels are manufactured on continuous, high-speed production lines. A coating that requires a 20-minute cure oven imposes a fundamental throughput constraint. Nanize cures in under 60 seconds below 70 degrees Celsius, applying by spray or roll-to-roll processes already in use on building material lines, without changing line speed.
The economic case sits in the maintenance savings over the building’s service life. The upfront coating cost at manufacture is a fraction of the cumulative cost of graffiti removal, corrosion treatment, and facade cleaning deferred or eliminated over 30 years.
Explore energy and construction applications at nanize.com/applications/
Paul George Savluc, Business Development, Marketing, Software, AI and more.
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