Unplugged Living

GB#22 - Keep Your Panels Clean Kids!

by Kevin Humphrey on February 25th, 2006

There’s a somewhat newer Solar blog out there that I recently discovered called SolarDweller. Jason, the man behind the blog, did a post last week on the importance of keeping your PV panels clean.

Of course you want to ensure that there isn’t any shade hitting your panels, especially during your peak hours. Shading on just a few cells within a panel can reduce that panel’s output by up to half.

Jason points to advice provided by Matthew McGlynn on his debris.com blog in regards to keeping your panels clean…

Sun Power has done extensive research and has consistently seen that clean panels produce 8% more than those panels that have accumulated dust from the atmosphere. For this reason, we suggest that you wash down your panels at the beginning of the summer. This is as simple as hosing them down with plain water. Ours were indeed covered with grime. Simply hosing them off didn’t do the job, either; I made a pass with a clean scrub brush to knock off the grit.

Here’s that particular post and then I highly recommend you take a wander over the rest of SolarDweller as well. Good stuff to be had and as Jason says about solar, it’s not just for satellites anymore. :)

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POSTED IN: Energy Basics, GreenBlogathon2006, Solar