One of the reasons for this is dirt.
Cleaning off solar panels.
This is essential to guarantee your safety and to make sure that the solar panels won t get damaged by water inside the junction box exposed wires or broken seals while dc electricity is flowing through the.
We ll get to the best way to clean your solar panels in a minute.
However cleaning is one aspect of solar panel maintenance that should not be taken lightly.
This is where cleaning solar panels may have to be done.
Your solar panels need to be exposed to sunlight in order to produce power.
Olson recommends homeowners use a soft bristle brush with an extended handle like the type used to clean off an rv.
They found that tilted panels don t require cleaning as much as flat panels.
The day your solar panels are installed is the day you will get the best performance out of them.
They may look scary and technical but in fact the technology is securely sealed inside the solar panel.
Google did a study on the need to clean solar panels.
All the electrical stuff is safely protected with aluminum frames hardened glass and insulation.
In most cases you won t need to clean your solar panels often if at all.
However unless you live somewhere with high amounts of smog dust dirt or sand blowing around solar panel cleaning is generally not necessary in most cases occasional rain will be enough to naturally and safely keep your solar panels clean and free of debris that could lower production.
There are some times it might make sense to clean your solar panels though.
How to clean your solar panels.
Solar panels are generally self cleaning but in particularly dry areas or where panel tilt is minimal dust and other substances such as bird droppings can build up over time and impact on the amount electricity generated by a module.
But first let s look at when and why you might need to invest in solar panel cleaning equipment or hire a professional cleaning service.
Fortunately cleaning solar panels is easy for ground mounted systems or for rooftop solar systems on a typical one story house.
Simply put if you can clean a window you can clean a solar panel.
As soon as your panels are out in the open in the clean air or not so clean air dust.
That s kind of the same logic for solar panels too.
Grime and bird poop doesn t need to cover an entire panel to have an effect.
After that it is all down hill.
How to clean solar panels.
Solar panels does not have any moving parts which is why there s not a whole lot of maintenance to take care of.
And don t forget to choose an environmentally friendly soap.
Sunbridge solar s system is a low tilt 10 degrees and it s overall power reduction due to the 2017 eagle creek forest fire ash resulted in a 53 reduction.
Rain will rinse the larger debris off however we found that the 1 way to maximize the solar energy produced is by cleaning the panels.
After all anything that accumulates dirt on them for example dust or pollen will get washed off the next time it rains.
The first step that you need to think of before cleaning your solar panels is to turn off the dc switch located in the combiner box.
