Cleaning Solar Panels
Photovoltaic solar panels detest dirt and grim more than anything. As the wind blows across the world lots of particles are picked up and deposited elsewhere. Some of this may end up on your solar panels. The grains of sand act as barriers to the sunlight and block the much needed solar energy from reaching the cells and reducing the amount of electricity produced.
Rooftop Solar Panel
We can compare this somewhat to how amazed we are at the clarity of our TV display or computer screen after giving it a good clean. Or giving the car windows a good clean and everything seems a bit more crisper. The light has been getting reflected away by all that dirt – wherever it may have come from – and reducing the quality of the display or views. Solar arrays suffer just as much and can benefit from a good regular clean.
Luckily the surfaces of your panels are treated and with the help of some rain or a watering hose the most of the dirt may was away by itself. The will still need a regular light service to maximize their performance. At home this would be relatively easy to perform if your panels are easier to access. Sometimes it might take a bit more effort if the mountings are hard to reach.
All this is really trivial when we compare residential solar with the massive solar farms that are being developed across the world. The crave sun, sun and well more sun. This often means low rainfall and hot dry locations like deserts which are ideal places for millions of little particles of dirt and sand to become airborne by a slight blow of wind. No doubt much of this ends up on the solar panels and keeping them clean is a necessary task that needs to be done regularly to keep up the efficiency of the electrical output.
The answer may come from Outer Space.
Not from aliens but from a development by NASA for it’s planetary robots. On far distant planets calling up a man is a space suit to give the solar powered robots a clean is not going to be practical. So the scientists have come up with a novel idea and this is to electrocute the dirt. Running a small short electric charge over the solar panels that causes most of the dirt to be repelled from the panels keeping them clean.
The amount of energy used is small and easily produced by the solar panels and the cleaner arrays perform much better. Using this idea back on earth based solar farms would add to the cost of the solar plants but the benefit from the solar efficiency would more than pay for itself many times over. It would not guarantee 100% that the panels will be clean, small dust particles could be easily shifted but as the grains get bigger then it would still need a wiped by damp cloth.
For all of us with solar panels at home, whether they are mounted on our roofs or on a smaller scale as part of a solar battery charger, the story here is quite clear. Dirty panels do not perform at their best. Keep them clean and maximize their power output.
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