Washing solar panels here in California and may areas one has to always be aware of hard water spotting. The spotting is caused most times by higher levels of Magnesium and Calcium in the water. Continual use of hard water on solar panels can cause damage to the panels, in some extreme cases even destroying the output of the panel.
To overcome this, most people install one or more water softeners. The problem with traditional water softeners is the salt used in the softener. The salt is heavy and needs to be replaced frequently. Also, there is the brine discharge that comes from the softener regenerating (flushing the minerals out of the water softener). Discharge lines have to be run somewhere to dump the salty discharge. Most water districts frown on the discharge being put into the sewer lines. In some cases, water districts have attempted to limit or ban water softeners that use salt.
At Heliotex, we have been experimenting with different types of water softeners to determine which will perform the best. We have found the using NUVO H2O water softener systems, we have been able to keep hard water spotting from happening on the panels.
Heliotex will now offer NUVO H2O Water Softener Systems on all its residential automatic solar panel cleaning systems as well as light commercial systems up to several thousand panels.
If you solar PV system has a traditional water softener that uses salt and would like to retrofit that system with the new Citrus Cartridge Softener System from NUVO, please give us a call at 760-837-0390.