Solar Panel Maintenance and Solar Panel Cleaning
Posted by easy eco blog
As you can see from the above picture, solar panels can get dirty. I try to clean my solar panels at least two times a year. March/April when the rainy season has passed, and August/September, towards the end of summer. Pollen from nearby evergreens really sticks to the panels. Try to clean that off before it bonds, otherwise a cleaner like Windex would be needed.
I have found a 10-15% decrease in solar output when my panels are dirty.
I gently hose off my solar panels and use a soft car wash brush to lightly scrub the dirt off when doing solar panel cleaning. I have heard that people with hard water may need to wash their solar panels using a delivered water service, so check into that if your water is hard.
Too lazy to do your own solar panel maintenance? There are companies that will do solar panel cleaning for you.
Interested in joining the club by installing Solar Panels? Sunpower has FREE solar power site evaluations. You have nothing to lose, except lower power bills.
Check out our other solar power articles:
Site Planning – Different Kinds of Panels – Actual Quote
Related posts:
- San Francisco Solar Panel Discount
- Solar Panel Installation – Site Planning
- Solar Panel System Quote
- No Money Down Solar Panels
- Car Maintenance to Extend Car’s Lifespan
Filed under: Alternative Energy, Cleaning, Conservation, Easy, Eco Friendly, Effort, Energy, Green, Home, Money | Tags: Cleaning Solar Panels, Dirty solar panels, Solar Panel Maintenance
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4 Responses to “Solar Panel Maintenance and Solar Panel Cleaning”
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April 29th, 2009 at 11:24 am
There is also a company (Heliotex I believe) that makes special water sprayers that you mount on your roof next to your solar panels. The system filters the water and apparently even allows you to add a biodegradable soap to clean your solar panels automatically.
April 29th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Just a heads up. there are a few companies out there that try to sell you cleaner specifically for solar panels. i’ve tried a couple and believe soft water and a light brush as the author suggested.
June 17th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Solar panels’ efficiency is constantly improving, thanks to immense technology development efforts that achieve improvement increments of a few percent. Regrettably, mediocre dirt and dust hamper sunlight transmission to the solar cells, and consequently reduce their throughput substantially. Cleaning the panels is a costly operation and therefore cannot be a practical solution. TitanShield SolarCoat is an optimal solution to the problem! This innovative photocatalyst material is sprayed on the surface of the solar panel and will avoid accumulation of dirt. Not only that, due to its special optical characteristics, TitanShield SolarCoat will diminish the loss of solar radiation through the glass of the panel by 5% (by reducing glare and thus reflection from the panel, as well as other losses). TitanShield SolarCoat is inherently a UV radiation mask. This helps to prolong the useful life of the DSSC cells that are susceptible to UV radiation. Once coated, the TitanShield SolarCoat will last and function for the entire lifetime of the solar panel. We offer here a holistic environmentally friendly solution that eliminates the use of water and detergents for cleaning the panels, while saving considerable expenses.
October 15th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
We use SOLAR MAID for our commercial systems, they are really good and the offset in the cost to the performance is a no-brainer.
We highly recommend these guys and best of all they are a franchise, so there is a Solar Maid operator near you. Plus they use their own organic cleaning soltuion and my boss swears that there is something in that solution that boosts our power output (they won’t devulge that info)