Cleaning solar panels

What should you use to clean solar panels?

The wrong cleaning method can damage your solar modules or make them not clean enough. Aggressive cleaning products, abrasives or high-pressure cleaners, for example, are absolutely not recommended. These can leave scratches and stains, which have a negative impact on the yield.

The right choice of cleaning products is therefore of great importance. Key supplies:

• Osmosis water: solar panels are best cleaned with osmosis water. This is purified water without nitrates, salt, lime, nickel, etc. It leaves no residue and prevents streaks and spots.
• Telescopic brush / soft brush or sponge: telescopic cleaners can be easily extended and retracted and are available in different lengths. They are also available with internal water feed, so you can use them immediately in combination with osmosis water, for example. Are the solar panels easily accessible? Then an ordinary soft brush or sponge can also be used.
• Solar panel cleaner: which is a cleaning product specifically for solar panels. Usually, cleaning with osmosis water is sufficient, but are the solar panels heavily soiled? Then a solar panel cleaner can help remove stubborn dirt without damaging the solar panels.

Vertically mounted solar panels are more affected by dirt

Dirt and dust on the solar panels naturally wash down to the lower edge of the solar panel. This causes an accumulation of dirt and algae against that lower aluminium edge of the solar panel. It can even accumulate up to the first row of solar cells. Vertically placed solar panels suffer much more from dirt than horizontally placed solar panels:

Horizontally mounted solar panels

With horizontally mounted solar panels, only part of the solar panel produces less output. This does not directly affect the entire performance of the panel. This is because the cells on a panel are divided into strings. Accumulation of dirt causes only the lower string to perform worse. The upper strings continue to deliver their output.