{"id":254,"date":"2018-12-14T01:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T01:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/?p=254"},"modified":"2018-11-28T21:25:49","modified_gmt":"2018-11-28T21:25:49","slug":"how-often-should-i-clean-my-solar-panels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/how-often-should-i-clean-my-solar-panels","title":{"rendered":"How often should I clean my solar panels?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It depends.\u00a0 As I mentioned in the previous article, where do you live?\u00a0 Our company is located in the California.\u00a0 It is not unusual for us to have wind gusts up to 50 MPH which blows the desert sand (actually pulverized granite) over the panels.\u00a0 Heliotex is located in Palm Desert, CA in the desert area of the Coachella Valley.\u00a0 In a test of my system on my home, I lost 11 \u00bd % in three months.\u00a0 This of course can vary during the different seasons and with unusual weather conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The National Renewable Energy Laboratories (NREL) has suggested that one can lose up to 25%.\u00a0 However, again this is an average.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0We have encountered locations with loses well in excess of 25%.\u00a0 In one major California utility test area, we were told that at that specific location they were losing 38% of their output with half of that occurring in the first 30 days.\u00a0 It should be noted that the panels were mounted at only a few degrees angle which makes dust capture worse.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The most diligent of owners who clean normally do it approximately every three months.\u00a0 Doing this ensures that your panels are clean for 100 days over a 25-year life cycle of which there is 9,125 days (excluding leap years).\u00a0 In actual practice, most owners only wash their panels about once or twice a year.\u00a0\u00a0 While rain may assist in removing some of the debris, it does not clean.\u00a0 It also provides a way for pollutants in the air to stick to the panels.\u00a0 The mounting angle of the panels may also contribute to dirt and dust buildup.\u00a0 Flat or nearly flat mounted panels retain more of their dirt and debris.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Calibri;\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The bottom line is that all experts agree that failure to clean a panel will result in power loss.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><b><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It depends.\u00a0 As I mentioned in the previous article, where do you live?\u00a0 Our company is located in the California.\u00a0 It is not unusual for us to have wind gusts up to 50 MPH which blows the desert sand (actually pulverized granite) over the panels.\u00a0 Heliotex is located in Palm Desert, CA in the desert [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":255,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions\/255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.solarpanelcleaningsystems.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}