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Cleaning Solar Panels

Once you get your solar panels installed, you will find them fairly maintenance free. Most are rated for a very long 30 year lifetime. As you can see from the above picture, solar panels can get dirty. Pollen, bird droppings, dirt, and dust can build up on solar panels. We try to clean 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 our nearby evergreens really sticks to the panels. Try to clean pollen off before it bonds, otherwise a cleaning solution may be needed.

We have found a 10-15% decrease in solar output when solar panels are dirty and can immediately see the increase in power generation on our inverters.

We gently hose off our solar panels and use a soft car wash brush to lightly scrub the dirt off when doing solar panel cleaning. See the picture above to see how a partially cleaned panel looks. Check with your solar panel manufacturer to verify the best way to clean your solar panels. We 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. Clean solar panels are worth the effort.

You may also need to trim back trees or plants that block the sun. We have had to do this every 5 years or so.

Too lazy to do your own solar panel maintenance? There are companies that will do solar panel cleaning for you.

Checking Solar Panel Operation

The only other part of solar panel maintenance is monitoring their energy output and ensuring there are no malfunctions. Check and log the power output on your solar inverters display on a daily or monthly basis. With this data, you can then check to see if your solar panels are functioning at full efficiency.  Solar panels produce different amounts of power during the year, so keeping a baseline measurement helps.

Be sure to ready our other solar panel – solar power articles:

Are Solar Panels for me? – Site Planning – Different Kinds of Panels – Actual Quote