How To Clean Solar Panels On Your Roof

a bird shitting on a solar panel

Solar Panel Cleaning – It's A Dirty Job, But Nobody Has To Practice It

The day your solar panels are installed is the day you lot will get the best performance out of them. After that it is all downwards hill. Admittedly, it is a very shallow colina and it might take over 40 years to get to the lesser, but solar day one is going to exist as good equally information technology gets.

1 of the reasons for this is dirt. As presently as your panels are out in the open in the clean air, or not so make clean air, grit will start to settle on them, blocking sunlight, reducing their efficiency, and costing y'all money.

The obvious solution is to pay someone to clean those panels, or get out in that location and clean them yourself. And sometimes this obvious solution will be a sensible class of action. If a dust storm has covered your panels in dirt or pelicans take had a poop political party on your roof, then it's a pretty good idea.

Simply near of the time solar panel cleaning is non worth it.

Because the boilerplate increase in output from cleaning panels is commonly minor, taking into business relationship the time and run a risk of injury if y'all exercise it yourself or how much you volition need to pay to accept it done, nether normal circumstances information technology is non cost constructive.

It makes far more sense simply to install a slightly larger system to recoup for the modest loss that results from grime than information technology does to pay someone to clean them. Or if your organisation is already installed, spending money on energy efficiency is far more cost effective than paying people to make clean your panels.

Normal Grime Hardly Affects Solar Panels

Dirt on solar panels usually has very little effect on their operation. This is considering, for well-nigh homes in Commonwealth of australia, rainfall is plenty to go along solar panels reasonably clean. Grime volition build up, but eventually there will be sufficient rain to wash most of it off.

Cleaning in improver to what is done naturally by rain will boost console output, since on average they volition take fifty-fifty less clay on them, but information technology doesn't assist much.

A study done in the U.s.a. in Tucson, Arizona, constitute that cleaning solar panels just improved their output by around 1%. This is in a location that merely receives a little more than half as much rainfall as Adelaide, which is Australia's driest capital.

This doesn't mean that in your particular location cleaning panels volition only better average performance by 1%. You might happen to live in a dirty, dingy place or accept lots of birds trying to turn your roof into the site of a future guano mine. But I would approximate that for most households in Australia, cleaning solar panels twice a twelvemonth would only meliorate their average output by around two%.

Flat Panels Are An Exception – They Need Cleaning

Pelting will launder most of the filth off panels, just merely if they are at an angle. When solar panels lie apartment h2o can pool on them and accept nowhere to go. Somewhen it evaporates and leaves grime backside. Worse, things such as leaves and other debris can land on solar panels and but stay at that place and seriously bear upon performance. A thin layer of grime will allow about low-cal pass through, simply a foliage is specifically designed to capture light. After all, it is a naturally occurring blazon of solar panel.

To avoid these problems, and because it is bad to have whatever electronic item sitting in water for an extended period of time, it is a very good thought to put solar panels on flat roofs in frames that tilt them at least 10 degrees. I recommend east-west tilts for a flat roof – where possible.

If your panels aren't tilted and then you'll have no choice simply to make clean them if y'all want to keep their performance upwards. Google found that while cleaning their tilted solar panels wasn't worth the effort, cleaning their flat ones afterward they got especially muddied could double their output.

Don't Be Fooled Past The Cool

Yous may may take heard people claim when they make clean their panels it improves output by 10% or more. And they may be right. Some people alive in filthy, filthy places. But it is like shooting fish in a barrel to be fooled into thinking that cleaning panels has a greater outcome than it does.

Firstly, cleaning panels will cool them down and cause them to operate more efficiently. If someone cleans hot panels when and immediately checks their performance and sees it has increased past 10%, that could be entirely due to the fact they are now twoscore degrees cooler.

And even if you aren't fooled by the cool and practice get a significant, real improvement in performance, as soon as they take been cleaned those panels are going to first getting dirty again, then the average increase in performance from cleaning will exist considerably less than the immediate increase that results.

Solar Panel Cleaning Costs Money

Professional person solar panel cleaners insist on being paid for their services. It doesn't matter how much you bargain with them, they e'er decline to do it for complimentary. Even my own children expect me to pay them money to clean solar panels and if I forget they're up there and put the ladder away, they ask for hush coin not to tell my ex-married woman.

The amount of money you volition be charged varies on where you alive, how many storeys your home has, and how many panels y'all take to clean. A reasonably common price is around $7.50 a panel for a one storey home or $ten a panel for a two storey dwelling. Only they do have a minimum charge, so if yous only take four panels don't wait to become them cleaned for $30.

If you shop around y'all might exist able to find someone who will clean your panels for under $five each. But note that less professional cleaners might exist more inclined to make a mistake such as flushing a load of soap suds into your rainwater tank.

The Economic science Of Paying For Solar Panel Cleaning Don't Pan Out

Paying people to clean your solar panels costs more than it'due south worth. Fifty-fifty in a state of affairs that is as shut to being best case as is realistically possible.

Let's say you rescue a console cleaner's poodle from drowning during the great poodle inundation of '07. Every bit a reward she gives you a great deal on cleaning panels, but $5 each, and you pay her to clean them twice a year.

Your rooftop solar organization is 5 kilowatts with twenty panels. Information technology'south in a sunny location that, without cleaning, generates an boilerplate of 25 kilowatt-hours a day. You have a 44 cent feed-in tariff and because yous are never home during the day you receive it for every kilowatt-hour generated.

If solar panel cleaning twice a year results in a ii% increment in average solar generation, then y'all will earn around an actress $80 a year, but y'all will have spent $400 having your panels cleaned. So fifty-fifty under splendid circumstances it makes no financial sense. Fifty-fifty if having your panels cleaned twice a yr increased their average output by 10% a twelvemonth, which is extremely unlikely, you would simply just break even.

Because the above situation is well-nigh every bit good as information technology tin become, most people will actually be far worse off. For example, a Sydney household with a similar sized due north facing system that has a six cent feed-in tariff, self consumes 50% of the solar electricity they generate, and pays 25 cents a kilowatt-hour for grid electricity, would only salve approximately $21 off their electricity bills each yr if cleaning results in a ii% increase in average solar console output. And so there is really no way having your panels cleaned can pay for itself.

Cleaning Panels Yourself May Not Make Economic Sense

Paying someone to clean your panels doesn't make economic sense, but what nearly doing information technology yourself? That has to be cheaper, right? Well, that depends on how valuable your fourth dimension is to yous and what value y'all place on your own cervix. Or at least having a neck that functions as it is supposed to.

Let's say you value your time at the Australian minimum wage of $17.70. If it takes you 20 minutes to make clean your panels, doing it twice a twelvemonth will toll you well-nigh $12 worth of time. As a 2% increment in output can save someone with a 5 kilowatt arrangement over $20 a twelvemonth, cleaning panels yourself tin can exist worthwhile. But this adding leaves out a major cost and I am not talking nigh water or detergent.

Each time you lot climb up on your roof, or utilize a ladder to spray water onto your solar panels,[1. Update 13 January 2020:If you are going to spray solar panels with water, don't use a full-bodied high pressure stream, as this could potentially harm the seals between the glass and the aluminium frame. Ideally, yous want the h2o to fall on the solar panels similar rain. Thanks to Richard for pointing this out in the comments.] there is a small merely real chance you volition autumn off and injure or kill yourself. If yous value your life at $10 million and you remember there is a one in a million chance you will accidentally kill yourself each time you clean your solar panels, and so pricing in that risk adds some other $x each fourth dimension. This means cleaning you lot solar panels yourself may not pay either, provided you lot place a high value on your own life.

Just if y'all clean your panels just by spraying them with a hose from the ground, you are probably not in whatever great danger. Yous are very unlikely to accidentally strangle yourself with the hose, or feel a sudden surge in water pressure that kills you with exploding safe hose shrapnel.

Don't Clean Panels – Install A Larger System

Installing a slightly larger solar system to compensate for losses from clay costs less than paying someone to clean panels. One actress panel on a 20 console system increases its output by around v% which is more than twice the average loss I would await from not cleaning them. Installing a organisation one panel larger will definitely price less than the $600 or more it could toll to have your panels cleaned 4 times. One extra console can more than than recoup for loses from clay for the entire life of the system.

While adding panels to an existing solar system is often non applied, there are all the same plenty of things people can do that will salvage them more money and have greater environmental benefit than paying for panel cleaning. For instance, they could invest in insulation, LED lighting, a heat pump hot water arrangement, or buy a bicycle and use it for some trips instead of a car.

If Yous Want Pay For Clean Panels, Delight Get Ahead.

If yous want to pay to take your solar panels cleaned, please go right ahead. Don't let me stop you. Merely be aware that most of the time it will cost more coin than it is worth.

I have no want to put solar console cleaning companies out of business organization, then if you decide against having your panels cleaned, delight consider hiring them to do something else you will discover worthwhile. For case, some solar panel cleaners also do windows.

For those interested in cleaning their solar panels themselves, regardless of whether or not it makes economic sense, I volition write an article on the best manner to go about information technology very soon (added: view Ronald'south article on how to clean solar panels here).