Solar System Maintenance

Maintaining your Solar PV System is important and gives your system the best opportunity to operate and produce most efficiently. Although solar panels themselves can endure a lot and are pretty much maintenance free over their lifetime, it is a good idea to inspect and monitor your panels for debris, visual defects and performance.

Monitoring and Inspection

One of the easiest ways to see if your system is performing as expected, is to open the monitoring application that is integrated with your Solar PV System. Here you can see performance disparities, problem notifications, and simply see that everything is powered up and running as intended. If you notice performance degradation, this could be a sign that you may have debris or other factors affecting your panels and their ability to receive sun.

Here are some things to look for during a visual inspection:

Debris:

Visual Defects:

Cleaning

Cleaning your solar panels is not a hard process. There are some things you do not want to do however. Here are a list of things to do to clean your panels and then things not to do.

Do’s:

Remove debris like leaves with a leaf blower
Use a hose and spray water on the panels to remove dirt and pollen. Or a squeegee with a long handle
Use specialized solutions or mild soaps
Rinse thoroughly and try and remove water spots as possible
Remove anything that appears to be a nest for critters. This can be under the panels and cause debris to hang underneath and reduce airflow and cause heavy build up of debris

Don’ts:

Panels are tempered glass, do not use water that is a large temperature disparity as the glass. This can cause the glass to crack
Don't use abrasive tools that may scratch the glass on the face of the panels. Use soft bristled brushes or squeegee
Don't apply a lot of pressure on the panels
Don't use a pressure washer