If you keep your solar panels clean, you can be sure of increased effectiveness over time, but before you clean them, make sure that you can clean them the right way. Let’s take a step-by-step look at the process.
Why Do You Need to Clean Solar Panels?
Most solar panel owners believe that it is reasonably necessary to clean solar panels as they depend on rain to do the washing.
Should you really clean your solar panels?
The simple answer to this question lies between the lines. Your solar panels won’t stop working if they’re not cleaned. However, you should know that you’ll sacrifice efficiency by not cleaning your solar panels. Even though the rain will wash away substances accumulated on the panels, it wouldn’t be as effective as a manual clean. If you reside in a particularly dusty and dirty area where it rarely rains, it can produce a remarkable effect on the efficiency of your solar panel. Sticky bird droppings are one reason why you need to clean your panels. However, you can get solar panel bird proofing to protect your panels from those droppings.
When Should You Clean Your Panel?
The cleaning time depends on the amount of dust in your area; cleaning your panels weekly should do just fine.
The best time in the day to clean your panel is early morning or late evening. It is not advisable to clean your solar during the day’s peak hours. Here’s why;
Pannels can become too hot during the day, the sun can cause the glass to heat up, and if you spray water on hot glass, it causes thermal stress, leading to breakage.
How to Clean Solar Panels
For the most part, solar panel cleaning is not a hard nut to crack. Having the necessary tools to access the entire panel’s surface area may be the most challenging aspect of this.
- Step by step approach
- Get a gentle-soft scrubber, brush, or squeegee that won’t leave a scratch
- Get a very mild soap containing no chemicals capable of harming or degrading the panels
- Add a little portion of the mild soap to a bucket of warm water
- Use a hose or low-pressure sprayer to rinse the solar panels
- Dip the soft scrubber into the warm soapy water and scrub the panel gently to remove debris
- Rinse the panel thoroughly. Make sure no soapy water is left.
- Leave panels in the sun to dry.
And you’re done. It’s that easy to do. It doesn’t require much as this process is pretty straightforward.
If you discover that the mess on your panels includes sticky bird or plant droppings, then you might want to give your panels but much better scrubbing than you would for just dust and dirt. No matter how sticky the droppings are, don’t be too hard on the panels, and don’t use high-pressure jets or pressure washers on panels. If you do, you might end up scratching or damaging the panels, resulting in poor, lowered performance and efficiency.
Conclusion
Now that you know the essence of cleaning your solar panels, be cautious to take it easy on the panels otherwise you may end up scratching them.
