Clean Solar Solutions Ltd has recently completed solar panel cleaning on behalf of Solarsense UK for one of their commercial clients in Bath, Somerset. The installation is made up of 559 panels across three PV arrays mounted on the roof of an agricultural cattle shed. Over recent months the system was seen to be under-performing and failing to meet anticipated generation figures.
After confirming that the inverters and other components were working as expected Solarsense contacted Clean Solar Solutions Ltd to see if cleaning the panels would help. We carried out a site visit and saw that the solar panels were among the dirtiest we had seen. As the system was on the roof of a working farm a lot of dust was being thrown up by the cows, settling on the panels and then being baked on by the sun. The dust is clearly visible on this photo.
We carried out the solar panel cleaning the following week accompanied by two Solarsense engineers. They monitored the output from the array as we were cleaning the solar panels and reported an increase of between 20-25% in output from each inverter as a direct result of having the panels cleaned.
On the first visit we cleaned the solar panels on two of the three arrays.
The third array was left uncleaned to allow a week of side-by-side output comparisons. Two weeks later, we returned to site and cleaned the third array. Again, this array gained a significant increase in output.
The dirt is clearly seen in the cleaning process. Look at the colour of the water in the guttering…
We worked hard on this site and our service had a massive impact. We changed dirty, under-performing solar panels like this…..
Into clean, efficient solar panels likes this….
We are glad to have completed our first solar panel cleaning job for Solarsense and we feel confident it was a success. We are looking forward to forging a partnership with Solarsense in the months and years to come and are confident that together we can offer a complete installation and maintenance package to ensure owners of PV systems generate the maximum return on their investment.”
