Solar Panel Cleaning
Panel upkeep is essential as dust and dirt build-up negatively affects your panel’s performance and lowers the efficiency. How often your solar panels should be cleaned is influenced by your geographical location and the surrounding elements that pollute your system.
Dirty Panels
While dust is a common pollutant, leaves also block sunlight, also affecting your panels’ efficiency. Solar systems installed in dust-prone areas, such as near main roads and farmlands, will require more frequent and thorough maintenance. Research has noted that the ‘reduction in solar efficiency due to dust on PV panel is approximately 40%’ in dust-prone areas.
Trees situated near your panels will not only drop their leaves and branches but attract birds as well. Bird droppings can affect a panel’s performance to a greater to degree than dust build-up. The common string-inverter PV system might result in minimal or no energy being produced if bird droppings cover part or all of just one solar panel. A micro-inverter system might see the affected panel/s producing no or limited power.
Cleaning the Panels
We clean solar panels by scrubbing the panels with deionised water and a soft brush. Deionised water is water that has been purified by removing electrically charged molecules (ions) typically meaning dissolved mineral contaminants such as sodium, iron, calcium, copper, chloride, and sulphates are removed.
Cleaning solar panels with abrasive cleaners or brushes can cause scratches on the glass panel which can affect the performance and integrity of the panel.