Should I Clean My Solar Panels?

It’s coming to the time of year that we get reduced cloud cover and a lot more sunshine. This will mean that our solar panels will start to generate more power again, which is helpful. It’s been quite a while since I last cleaned them, so last weekend I picked up a soft bristle brush to have a go at cleaning them.

The last few times that I have cleaned the panels I have just hosed them off, letting the water pressure from the hose do the work of cleaning the solar panels. However this year I’ll be giving them a scrub to really clean them up.

I was curious about what kind of performance increase I would get from cleaning them, and after watching the below video, I reckon it’ll be pretty significant. Paul on the video managed to get a performance increase of about 30 – 40%!

Cleaning the solar panels should help a lot, especially with the ridiculous high cost of electricity here in South Australia…

Make a Cheap and Easy Window Cleaner

Lately I needed to clean the outside of all the windows on our house. I headed down to our local Home Depot to find out what they recommended and I was pointed to a very large bottle of Windex. Considering that I was needing to apply the liquid to a squeegee the end of a very long poll, this didn’t seem like a very economical solution, which got me looking for alternatives.

The alternative that I found to Windex was very simple.

  • 2-caps full of dish washing liquid
  • 1-cap full of Vinegar
  • Bucket of warm water

This solution worked great for us in cleaning our windows, although I do wish that I had a better squeegee to stop those annoying streaks on the second floor windows …