Soiling is the accumulation of dirt in solar panels which leads to a decreasing trend in solar energy yield and may be the cause of vast revenue losses. The effect of soiling can be reduced by washing the panels, which is, however, a procedure of non-negligible cost. Moreover, soiling monitoring systems are often unreliable or very costly. We study the problem of estimating the soiling ratio in photo-voltaic (PV) modules, i.e., the ratio of the real power output to the power output that would be produced if solar panels were clean. A key advantage of our algorithms is that they estimate soiling, without needing to train on labelled data, i.e., periods of explicitly monitoring the soiling in each park, and without relying on generic analytical formulas which do not take into account the peculiarities of each installation. We consider as input a time series comprising a minimum set of measurements, that are available to most PV park operators. Our experimental evaluation shows that we significantly outperform current state-of-the-art methods for estimating soiling ratio.

A birds-eye view of three of SpaceX's glimmering Starship spacecraft shows that the vessels are slowly but surely coming together. In aerial footage taken by videographer John Winkopp, the Starship craft's shimmering stainless steel body can be seen taking ship at the company's facility in Cocoa, Florida. As reported by CNBC, the video also shows the first stainless steel bands of another Starship prototype, the Mark 4, being assembled. The progress gives credence to a claim from SpaceX CEO and Tesla founder, Elon Musk, who claimed that the next-generation craft will be ready for test flights between October and November. An FCC filing surfaced in September that revealed SpaceX requested permission to fly Starship more than 12 miles into orbit and then land the craft back down in the same spot.

Tesla is developing a long-haul, electric semi-truck that can drive itself and move in "platoons" that automatically follow a lead vehicle, and is getting closer to testing a prototype. Love exists, but they are not together. Reports swirled over the weekend that the entrepreneur, Elon Musk, and Amber called it quits, after publicizing their couple status in April. TheStreet's Action Alerts PLUS Portfolio Manager Jim Cramer looks at Thursday's trending stocks. Tesla had roughly 63,000 people cancel their order for the companies Model 3 car in the last year. Tesla's greatly anticipated Model 3 will finally start rolling out of the manufacturing plant. CEO, Elon Musk took to Twitter to make the announcement.