Should you wash your solar panels?
incoherency.co.uk
incoherency.co.uk
So they look good and the potential buyer sees something that looks to be in good condition and working well.
Actually, the history of edits shows that this is contested territory where people regularly remove what they term as spam links. So, while a disinterested editor might remove a link to a listicle about how to stage your home, they might leave in the breathless tone as harmless. The drive by editors probably feel that they have no more time to rewrite it than we do, given that they watch over many articles, not just this one.
I'd say it's also "because the kind of people who clean and tidy things also maintain them"
Obviously it's not infallible. But even if the owner only cleaned their stuff now that they are selling it that still tells you they are the type of person to take action where it's beneficial
I don't think so, esp at selling time, I definitely expect that the owner has just made it look pristine. But the opposite is definitely true: if you can't even bother making it look clean and tidy when trying to sell, I'm pretty sure you've not taken care of it in the past!
Gross house means almost certainly not maintained.
Cleaning in general is also usually a core part of maintaining something. Dirt and grime lead to wear and tear.
Theoretically, the price of the house before cleaning should be equal to the value if the house after cleaning, minus whatever the cleaning costs. In reality, you'll get much less for your house without cleaning it, because human emotions.
If I tour a house with pet urine stains all over the carpet, it's only logical to conclude that the owner is likely not maintaining the rest of the house to a very high standard.
It doesn’t prove that you’ve been generally on top of things for the lifetime of the house but the inverse situation where you couldn’t clean one time for guests sure doesn’t.
A family came for the tour and before walking in the father put his hand on the rail, looked up at the house, and said "this place seems well maintained". Then they bought the house after a small pleasant (for us) bidding war.
The contractor earned his high rate and then some.
I.e. putting in an expensive door knob is a good plan!
> All were compromises in various ways
That's true of just about everything.
Did we rule looking at something based on photos/descriptions? Yes, certainly.
You can learn a lot from such experiences. What to look for/what not to look for, etc. Sometimes the wrong location will have the right house and you can dial in precisely the things that matter to you so you waste less time on future showings.
Of course if you're highly experienced and on your 4th house purchase the value for your time may not be there. But I've found it quite useful over the years - especially when looking at different property types than I'm experienced with.
I was confused by the parent post too. Perhaps they mean that you see the neighbourhood before you even see the house. A little like the first impression of the house is made before even seeing the actual house.
Whatever you wanted to hear to make them the most amount of money in the(ir) least amount of time.
They are the sellers agent.
You should not trust them a millimetre further than that.
(I bought my current house based on a spreadsheet analysis. Doorknobs are easy to replace, foundations, walls, electric, a lot harder.)
BTW, a so-so agent will lie to you. The ones on the top, however, are that way because they get repeat business.
P.S. Read books on salesmanship. It will inure you against slimy sales pitches.
A few things we changed right away: - new mailbox (replacing a rusted 30+ year old one) - lots of landscaping work (the majority of which I can do myself) - installed a wine fridge (I always felt it gave the sense that the kitchen was upgraded when we were touring places) - replaced old door knobs with modern matte black levers; ~$50 each
The house was built in 1968, so it's been interesting to think about all of the small things that make it feel dated that can be changed for not much money.
Mostly, I notice that they look like efforts that were motivated by trying to get a high price, but are limited to being fast and cheap.
So while I do note them, my perception of them is not generally positive at all.
I'd rather the outlet covers be original and clean than the new, usually oversized covers (with a slight color mismatch) I often find.
If I'm seeing caulk anywhere, that's problematic for me. When used properly-sparingly to seal things, it doesn't draw the eye at all. When it's used to hide sins, it's awful.
When I see sloppy caulk I first think of the time I'll need to spend to dig it all out. And then, I think about the time it will take to actually-fix whatever things it was hiding that nobody has ever bothered with actually getting right.
When I see new doorknobs on old doors, I'm mostly attracted to the outline that was left by the original hardware. And then I wonder: The old knobs were probably made from materials like steel, cast iron, and brass; stuff that can last for centuries with some maintenance. Why were they replaced?
Were the old knobs non-functional somehow, or were the owners too cheap and lazy to bother with taking things apart for a bit of TLC and preservative paint?
What other parts of the house were done fast, cheap, and/or lazy like a landlord who doesn't give a fuck? What haven't I found yet that they "fixed"?
Sometimes it's easy to find: The "soft" parts under the sink are a mess. Flexible pressure lines that are a mile too long, bendy pipes on the drain (this should never happen), traps in series with one another, bizarro-world TPCLALL-branded Amazon-sourced parts that simply do not match regulated norms at all and which haven't seen a UPC® logo ever... but that's simple to rip out and replace.
Sometimes it's harder to find. Drains that go uphill. A sea of CPVC pipes running in every direction, with dead ends, all buried in the basement ceiling. No trap for the bath tub upstairs. Mixed metals. Mixed plastics: PVC is fine, and ABS is fine, but mixing them together is bad (and shows that a trip to the parts store to get The Right Fucking Thing was just too much work, since it wasn't done). Bad or nonexistent venting.
The problems of today are caused by the lazy, quick fixes of yesterday.
I now realize a lot of the bad bathroom smells are because of traps siphoning dry. Tho the general lack of exhaust fans doesn’t help. Anywho, AAVs to the rescue! And mineral oil in their version of a t&p valve if it doesn’t need to drain much to prevent evaporation of the trap water: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupe_de_s%C3%A9curit%C3%A9
I have a photo of the original breaker box that looks like bad AI, it’s so unspeakably awful - just this wild spaghetti of muddy corroded wires and parcel tape with bits of string and random breakers floating in midair at jaunty angles, connected sometimes to live, sometimes to neutral, sometimes across circuits, usually doing nothing. The earthing was purely accidental. I just ripped it all out, but not before the microwave bit me one rainy morning.
> I'd rather the outlet covers be original and clean than the new, usually oversized covers (with a slight color mismatch) I often find.
Any task can be screwed up if someone is careless enough, but this is extremely easy to get right. If a standard cover plate fit before, it's trivial to buy a replacement of the standard size and appropriate color.
Cleaning works too, I personally just wouldn't bother cleaning a part that costs ~$0.50.
> When I see sloppy caulk I first think of the time I'll need to spend to dig it all out.
Would you really rather see cracked caulk, which means (a) the original contractor probably used whatever cheap rigid caulk he found in his van, (b) it's been letting water through instead of sealing, and (c) noone cared enough to fix it?
A new, not-oversize cover plate that actually-matches in color is fine. As you suggest, it is trivial to get that right.
But people screw it up anyway, and when they do so it represents a distinct lack of attention to detail. If I find that along the presence of other new electrical stuff, like outlets with USB jacks, smart home dimmer switches, and can lights with fixed LED elements, then... man. They obviously couldn't even get the outlet covers right. What else did they screw up, that I can't see?
Old caulk that was skillfully applied and remains in good shape isn't a problem; it is not broken and does not need fixing. New caulk that is well-done isn't necessarily an issue at all. Both communicate that a base level of positive care for the quality of the home was present.
But when it's sloppy, it's a clear indicator that they just didn't care much at all during the process. There's direct evidence that they were unwilling to put the effort into making a smooth bead of caulk instead of a messy one. They didn't care about that part of this small job, and by extension they probably didn't care about what they were covering up (whether it was good, bad, or indifferent).
Anyway, maybe the lazy fixes work for enough buyers that it does increase the sale price, and that's good for a seller.
It doesn't work for me, though. The presence of these kinds of things brings me more questions than it does answers.
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The answer that maximizes the price by satisfying all potential buyers is to do careful and correct fixes. If the quick fix makes some money, then a good fix makes even more money. Take the time to get it right.
Also make sure your screws in your outlet wall plates are vertical. I've found it's a key tell between mediocre electricians & handymen, and the real pros, and it gives me confidence (perhaps unfounded) that the electrical systems are in good shape.
What would be better is not doing anything and letting the new owner install what makes sense to them, instead of having them pay markup essentially for these placeholder finishes, but obviously we can't have any altruism on this capitalist earth.
But if these hacks do increase the sale price: When (if) you find a suitable place that has not had the cheap+easy hardware refresh, then it will tend to sell for a lower price than one that has.
And that's good for buyers like you, and me.
Anyone who takes business advice from Trump is a moron.
The bar is low and you’d still need to hand the devil a shovel.
I was in a buying situation where my old lease was expiring soon, I had a second kid on the way, and the last thing I'd have wanted is to buy a place where I'd have contractors milling around for weeks or months to make various repairs. I was willing to pay a hefty premium for a place that's in a move-in condition.
I don't think this extends to "you'll get $10k less if you don't vacuum", but it's a common courtesy on a million-dollar transaction to maybe not leave a mess.
It's trust, because if the previous owners can't even bother cleaning it up, what else might their neglect have done to the house? Maybe I'll need to change the house wiring, verify if any new paint job is hiding mold or infiltration... All that is the cost of uncertainty and uncertainty grows with distrust.
This is the latter.
See also: stereotype accuracy
The photos looked like those fancy interior magazines. I will never know if it is because of my effort and investment but I’m certain that it attracted a lot of attention. People really want a move-in ready home that looks like the magazines.
I feel like this is 3/4 of a coffee table?
Amazon couch for $250:
https://www.amazon.com/Kingfun-Loveseat-Century-Upholstered-...
A messy, shabby looking home also signals that the previous owners were likely not diligent in taking care of their property.
It's not because of emotions. It's because it correlates with other neglect that may be less obvious.
A good real estate agent has a rolodex of various contractors that can fix up a house to ready it for sale.
They would prefer to throw out an old suite rather than something that has just been fitted to 'sell the house'. The excuse is provided for them to make it their own.
What they don't want is filth. A spotlessly clean house is preferable to one that has been hastily tarted up with a quick lick of paint. It is respect for the buyer.
Most "risks" have an upside and a downside. In this case, for example, the solar PV system may be working better or worse than the (potential) buyer initially comes to understand.
We have huge industries based on selling "risk, but with a huge potential upside" to people willing to pay for access to the potential upside. Many of those customers are not interested in low risk in that context.
So "more risk, pay less" is not a hard and fast rule, but depends on what is being purchased, the circumstances of the buyer, and more.
But that's irrelevant to my point, which was that risk is factored into the price.
So they had to negotiate who was going to pay off the solar panel, and this all had to be completed before home sale.
If, hypothetically, the seller never disclosed the financing, then that would be an issue between the seller and the financer. At most, the buyer would need to allow the financer access to retrieve their property. The financer could then sue the seller for the buy-out cost and/or breach of contract.
As an aside, at least around here (USA), if you see a house with solar panels, it is a good assumption that they are financed.
Nope, at least not typically.
Typically in the US houses are sold as-is unless it's noted in the closing docs. Everything in or on the house when you close is yours. The seller would be the one fighting with the financing company, as (again unless noted in closing docs) they would be considered fixtures and considered part of the real estate sale.
If the solar panels were financed with an unsecured loan, then the home buyer would unambigously own them. It is also possible for the lender to have a lien against the panels; which again would survive the home sale.
So if a seller wants to keep their smart doorbell, or their curtains, or to take all the plants from the garden - they can agree that, as part of contract and price negotiation. At the same time, the buyer gets to send people to check the property and can lower or withdraw their offer depending on what the inspections reveal.
(And yes, this is a very slow way of doing this)
For example, I run an HOA, and agents routinely forget, until the last minute, to come to me for the HOA's paperwork. The state even requires 10 days notice. I've switched to an attitude where I proactively reach out to the seller (not agent) early in the process.
Language question (ESL speaker here): how does that square? I'd think "sink-or-swim" would imply those still swimming are competent enough by definition?
(In case my results are personalized)
> "Sink or swim" is a common English idiom that means a person must either succeed through their own efforts or fail completely, with no middle ground or outside help.
There are a lot of jobs in the US that are easy to get, but many people fail at the job. Typically these are sales jobs where the pay is mostly commission. (IE, most pay is tied to making sales.) The "sink or swim" aspect is that either someone is successful (IE, they make sales and get paid) or fail (don't make sales and thus don't get paid) and move on.
generally the markets where this happens have people who are too rich to care about electricity savings
The drop off after cleaning could well be because some of the initial boost could come from the water cooling off the panels: solar panels become less efficient at higher temperatures so the drop of after they're all cleaned could be them warming up again after the water has evaporated.
I easily see 5% increases in efficiency after cleaning (with micro inverters), but also see ~3% increase in output on a hot day from just spraying the panels with water to cool them off, which goes away in 15-20min.
If you're going to clean once a year, do it after the "last" rain of the year before summer peak solar output. If you live somewhere rural with summer thunderstorms, with high angle panels, and without a lot of pollen (or dust storms), you may not need to clean them much at all.
If you're going to climb on a roof, do it safely! A 10' fall can kill or maim you.
This was almost certainly the case. AIUI, that cooling still makes a large difference.
Makes me wonder if it is worth it having a small esp32 or similar control a sprinkler system for the panels. Keep them cool during high ambient temps by spraying a litre of water on each panel every 30m.
An idea I had a while back (when I was considering panels) was running my mains water through the back of each panel (before the mains got to the hose) in a sort of radiator pattern.
My peak summer output is basically the same as when installed, making 36-38 kWh on a cloudless day. I'm actually impressed my panels haven't really degraded in performance over those 19 years.
[edit - added technology]
Which means your experience is irreplicable, other companies' solar panels may be crap.
The latter can be a surprisingly big problem. Southeast of Galapagos we had a booby sit on our spreader for a day, and it managed to cover our two 100Wp panels in the bow almost completely.
The rudimentary nature of the setup makes me think there isn't something like a single conductor 12awg (or euro equivalent) copper wire that bonds to all panels and a basic $30 rod.
The equipment grounds should be tied together to prevent any difference in potential though.
But this is an array that looks a bit remote from any structure, and even if the electronics themselves are utterly, perfectly safe, the bonding wire will cause the panel frames to be at the potential of the inverter’s ground, and the soil will be at whatever its local potential is, and this may be different, resulting in a “touch potential”. You can mitigate this with a supplemental ground (or whatever your jurisdiction calls it) closer to the panels. There are fancy ways to do this particularly well to improve safety in the event of a fault.
If you are contacting the actual power wiring of the solar array, something is wrong. If you are feeling capacitive coupled current from the power wiring of the array, then I imagine this means your inverter has crappy filtering, and again the only way you would feel it is if the panel frame isn’t at the same potential as the local soil.
Oh, and if you live somewhere prone to lightning, you probably want to give a possible lightning strike to the panel a better route to a high quality ground than through the bonding wire to your house.
(In fact, in many parts of the world, including IIRC 48 US states, the power utilities may operate their distribution networks with a current carrying wire (combined neutral and ground) that is grounded at multiple points along its route, which will generate substantial leakage current through the ground. The exceptions are IIRC California and Wisconsin, and IIRC those states have their rules to help protect cattle from becoming part of an undesirable circuit while being milked. In CA at least, all the distribution transformers on the poles have at least two bushings on the primary side, and this is why. I believe this is California General Order 95, rule 33 [0].)
It’s not usually, all of the panels and also the metal racking must be bonded and grounded.
Supplementary grounds are allowed by the NEC, article 250.54
There are zero requirements for supplemental grounds, you could use a single 24AWG conductor bonded to a brad nail or a #6 bare copper conductor bonded to (3) 5/8” dia’ 10’ ground rods. The fact that there are no requirements should tell you something about the necessity of supplemental grounds.
> 250.54 Auxiliary Grounding Electrodes. One or more grounding electrodes shall be permitted to be connected to the equipment grounding conductors specified in 250.118 and shall not be required to comply with the electrode bonding requirements of 250.50 or 250.53(C) or the resistance requirements of 250.53(A)(2) Exception, but the earth shall not be used as an effective ground-fault current path as specified in 250.4(A)(5) and 250.4(B)(4).
And just because the NEC doesn’t say you need to mitigate touch potentials for a specific installation doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t. The NEC is just a bunch of requirements, not a complete guide to building safe, high quality electrical installations. And there appears to be plenty of guidance from IEEE about this if you feel like paying for a copy of the standard:
https://store.accuristech.com/ecia/products/preview/2085911
The NEC does have plenty to say about grounding for purposes of reducing potential differences in other (non-solar) installations, though. Swimming pools are a notable example (with no specific requirement IIRC to connect the fancy bonding to the Earth at the pool, but a typical concrete pool with NEC-mandated bonding is likely an excellent connection to the local soil).
Amusingly, an inspector could plausibly require an “equipotential plane” per NEC 547.44 if the solar array is accessible to livestock.
Alternatively, from first principles: suppose you are standing with bare feet on wet soil 100 meters from a building. That building has a very nice ground rod array, giving an impedance of 50 ohms from the building’s ground to your feet. Now take a long wire that is insulated except at the ends, connect one end to the building ground, and firmly hold the other end in your hand. How do you feel about this situation? You have a nice wire loop, potentially with area on the order of 100m^2, containing your heart. It can inductively couple to time-varying magnetic fields (e.g. the fields around nearby transmission lines) and it can capacitively couple to other conductors. It can resistively couple to power lines with multiply grounded neutral or to electrified railways or to nearby buildings with old-style (earlier NEC revisions) shared neutral/ground feeds And lightning can strike the array. I think it would be wise to ground the array to earth to reduce the potential difference between the frame and earth.
They are DC, and the voltage is usually very high, between 300V and 600V.
At this voltage you will get a burn, like touching a hot kettle, but because it is DC you will be able to easily “untouch” it.
Yes, the panel frames should all be grounded to each other, and also to Earth in one spot along the chain, as this makes it more difficult to be electrocuted by them because the resistance of the grounding wire is much lower than the resistance of your body, and electricity takes the shortest path.
Well done on this cleanly-executed pun.
The reason it’s popular is because most people don’t understand the economics at all. Someone can go door-to-door in a neighborhood offering to clean solar panels and making huge claims about improving efficiency so much that you can’t afford not to do it.
Homeowners who invested $30K in solar panels think of a $300-600 charge as an easy choice to keep their investment producing money.
My parents had someone going around their neighborhood trying to charge $50/panel for cleaning. They didn’t even climb a ladder. They sprayed washing solution from the ground. Most neighbors declined, but you could see the guy spraying down a couple roofs.
Easy way to clear $1000+ per day for knocking on some doors and pointing a hose at a couple rooftops, at least until the public figures out the scam.
The gains are marginal, I'd have to do more research than I feel like doing to get hard numbers weighted against weather conditions, but I'd guesstimate around 300-400kWh more output per month.
SDGE gives me $0.3-0.5 per kWh during solar peak, so I'm breaking even after one month, and it makes the house look nicer, so I'd call that a win.
Yes, that may save you a bit of energy. No, not that much, and overall the financial savings are a small fraction of the service's charge.
A friend worked in energy conservation at the time and actually studied the impact of cleaning coils on refrigerators as part of a recycling programme (so: measuring pre- and post-cleaning power consumption on units which had been in use, most for quite some time). The net results, over hundreds (if not more) units: to little difference to detect statistically.
If you're doing the work yourself or don't have to pay for it: possibly worthwhile for peace of mind if nothing else. Paying someone else? No.
I suspect a similar situation for solar panels.
Kind of off topic, but I see a lot of folks proximate to me have built systems to turn panels so they face the sun more closely. I can see the use in that if you don't have much space or if you have a large commercial operation, but this area is very rural.
My array (4kw) which I built myself has 10 400W panels. The panels cost me $1200 because the minimum order is 12 and the supplier suggested buying extras; shipping large panels one at a time isn't cheap. In fact, the shipping for the entire system (about $5000 worth of equipment) was almost $1000.
But my feeling is that for the cost of a moving array that tracks the sun / time of year would have cost quite a lot more and have involved construction that I personally wasn't comfortable with. The conclusion I came to is that it would cost about the same to build a second array, angle it for "summer" (mine is angled to be most efficient in winter), and hook it to the other MPPT on my controller.
That would take up a lot of space, but a) I am 40 acres and b) then I could run a mig welder with impunity during the day...
I didn’t make a profit, it’s not commercial — but apparently getting to almost break even on my energy bills is a “profit”.
- If you have any income from commercial operation (selling stuff) you are required to declare that, when doing your taxes.
- When selling electricity you're not so much classified as an energy company, but fall under similar taxation rules as a company. This also means you can get the VAT back, you paid when buying panels, inverters etc.
- Since 2023 solar installations smaller than 30 kWp are completely exempt from this taxation scheme. This means you're not paying any VAT, when buying equipment for your solar installations and don't have to declare the revenue.
- You can get around the 30 kWp limit under some circumstances by having multiple separate installations.
- Parent post is talking about an off-grid installation, which would be exempt anyway, because there is no revenue from selling electricity.
The tax exemption from 2023 was a very welcome move by SPD and the Green party to reduce bureaucracy regarding solar installations and I think the 30 kWp is pretty reasonable
Would be interesting to see, how other countries are handling this.
My 6.7kW system produces 2.5 what we need in the summer, and 0.5 of what we need in the winter (even though its output here in New Mexico is relatively constant). Adding a couple extra is going to accomplish nothing in the face of a winter heating system (even with high efficiency heat pumps).
I replaced it all with 9kW worth of panels (about $3k, shipped) on 4 simple 60° ground mounts, normal wiring and appliances. Angle is optimized for early spring / late fall - there's effectively no sun in winter, and the rest of the year I have excess power even with fixed, sub-optimal angles.
The diminished cost of panels alone over the past 20 years has transformed "off-grid" from a pastime for wealthy hippies into a reasonable solution for remote living.
And about the washing, I wonder if it would be worth it to automate the process with a spray of water periodically? You can still wash the panels but I suspect it won't be necessary if there isn't too much dust accumulation? Isn't rain supposed to wash away the dust? What am I missing here?
I don't have numbers, but I suspect it alleviates issues with dust buildup and temperature.
Sadly, my investigations a few years back indicated that a suitably strong and robust 2-axis tracker that would withstand our local winds and snow loads is significantly more expensive than just buying more panels and facing some of them east/south/west to accomplish the same thing. Doing this on an existing shed also avoids some local zoning rules vs a dedicated ground mounted system.
(This assumes that you have enough space, but for grid-scale solar this is not the limiting factor. The costs are roughly in order from most to least: the cost of the inverters and grid connection, the cost of installing the panels, the cost of the panels themselves, then the cost of the land to put them on)
As always ymmv and depends somewhat on your location. I'm around 30 degrees from the equator.
During summer, lying flat gets a lot more power. And more importantly the start and end of the generating period is longer. Ie the panels get more sun in the morning and evening thankfully they were tilted.
In winter the sun is more "from one direction" and obviously is lower on the horizon.
The dirt may not be piling up, but it's far from clean.
I do a similar procedure for my house windows. I use a squeegee on those but probably not necessary for panels.
In places where solar panels are used the most, like the Southwest US, there isn't much rain to speak of. Panels get a lot of dust accumulation from Feb-Nov typically, just when they're needed the most.
> This is the yin and yang of market-distorting incentives. Today's incentive to install solar becomes tomorrow's disincentive to upgrading it.
I am not sure what author is trying to hint. But solar does not need artificial subsidies, and can pay for itself!
There are no subsidies in UK! Homeowners get so much money, because of all that sunshine and wind energy, their house generates! UK goverment just run out of money, when energy got expensive!
UK goverment needs to step up, to replace gaz with renewables!
You can not expect homeowners to sell energy bellow market price!
That's true now, but wasn't true when those panels were installed. There were subsidies available to get the market kick-started.
They consist of an extra payment for every kwh you generate on top of the payment for delivering the power to the grid. The amount varied depending on when you signed up to the scheme, but at certain points it was as much as 50p/kwh (+ inflation, so more than that now).
I think he is describing a subside that some governments gave years ago: you installed for example 5K, and get paid for whatever they generate at 300% market price, for a long time (25 years?). Today you find out that upgrading panels would made perfect financial sense, if you were selling at 100% and are going to sell electricity at 100% (you will be doubling the output for a tenth of the inversion 15 years ago), but as the subsides of 300% no longer exist, you will be actually losing money by upgrading.
At grid scale, yes.
For the house, not so much.
The feed in tariff was at one point 41 pence per kwhr which is probably £10 a day in summer.
but at 12p a kwhr it drops to £3.6
However, 10kwp of panels is ~£1800, but the micro inverters needed to drive them are >£3k (as its outside you can probably use two larger inverters.) Then mounting system is probably a good 800 quid too.
Of course, you can math that any way you like to make the numbers bigger or smaller, depending on whether you're representing the buyer or the seller of the system.
When I check on the VRM portal it makes a difference, and since I am so dependent on them all year round, I have no problem giving them some attention from time to time. Ten mins well spent.
This honestly sounds like a non-trivial strike against installing solar panels, especially if they’re installed on tall roofs.
I definitely wouldn’t want to have to clean them that often, or pay to have them cleaned that often.
If you’re spending only 10 minutes on them, then maybe you don’t have that many, and they’re not up high.
I have 4kw of panels and 15kwh of storage. I only get down to about 80% most nights (I heat with wood and propane).
But my system will charge completely in about 2 hours of full sun. If it took 3 hours it wouldn't make a difference. So I generally don't clean them (well, the rain and snow do that work).
I do remove snow, because that has a very noticeable impact.
Is the difference that you are pushing back to a grid (I am not), so the power all gets used regardless of you being the one to use it?
On December 21, due to trees, my panels get around 2 hours of full sun, if the universe smiles on me.
I use around 5-6kwh per day, if I use my computer, which I need for work.
This will be the first year with the fogstar batteries, previously had 1x48v generic lithium battery, but last year I used the generator most days from around end of november until March e.g. December consumption was 153kwh, solar generated 62kWh, and generator made up the rest.
This year, thanks to having more storage, we'll be better able to take advantage of sunny days and capture more power. I also have a freezer and washing machine this year :-) Ask me in March how it went.
All of my panels are easy to access, none on a roof, so the effort is minimal and has non-zero power benefits in my experience.
I should add that I am surrounded by trees and the panels accumulate a green tinge quite quickly, plus bird shit.
You need a heat pipe between your freezer/fridge and outside. Then it will “function” when it’s colder outside than in your fridge and otherwise sit idle(ish). Sure you’re bringing “cold” into your big warm box (home), you have wood to overcome that. All theory, but it makes sense in my mind!
(Though in most places, it rarely gets colder outside than in your freezer)
My fridge is indoors, where the wood I chop today will keep us both warm in the winter.
Thank you for your theory, but I'll stick to doing the practical that you read about on the Internet.
When I had 6 100W panels and was trying to keep my laptop (and lights) running off that, then I did a lot more trying to keep them clean. If I was having to burn fuel for electricity, I'd certainly be trying a lot harder to squeeze what I can out the array.
Anyhow, good luck.
I likely am in a similar position. My hope is to get a cistern buried this year so I can have more than 40L of liquid water on hand at any given time... and then maybe even a shower :D Washing myself with a bucket is starting to lose its charm.
Good luck to you too!
It's fun to meet the basic challenges head on though, eh?
I got a quote for a backhoe rental today and am a little apprehensive (it's by far the largest machine I will have operated), but hey, I get to run a backhoe for a weekend...
Messing around with ground panels is lower risk and safer than roof panels where tool extenders and ladders start to become involved. If you have roof panels, you are the biggest danger to your panels (and yourself.) Don't try to clean them, spray them, knock snow off of them. I was told this multiple times by my installer. :)
So, at least in our case, definitely worth it.
I’ll try to post an update when/if I get exact numbers, though!
Facing this as well. We've got our 5.2kW system in a pile in our yard as the house is being enlarged, new roof going on, etc. We're switching from a gas furnace to a heat pump system, and will also be installing a hot tub. I'm sure our annual power bill will double from say $1k to $2k, but it doesn't make sense to enlarge our system.
I'm 8 years into a 20 year net metering scheme (NEM2.0 in CA), and any changes I make will kick me off the plan. In theory I am allowed to add up to 10% or 1kW, but in practice my solar company keeps telling me it's not worthwhile. I think the paperwork and administrative burden of even adding the amount I'm "allowed" to add just means it's not cost-effective.
Whether or not the utility actually would notice that I'm mysteriously getting 1kW additional generation (if no paperwork was filed) is another story.
But if cash is tight, yeah, not so much.
But, the real factor in all of this is how valuable the time required to clean the panel is.
And I've seen cases where it made a 30% impact. In other locations, it is a non-issue, but vegetation was a hassle.
In my mom's part of SoCal, it's extremely dusty. Without bi-annual cleaning a solar panel's output will drop by over 25%.
On the other hand, where my brother lives up in Norcal, an annual cleaning is overkill.
InSight was stationary and not so fortunate. But, the ground team got quite creative with its robotic arm to try and manipulate the sand that had accumulated on the solar panel, and gained a little bit more power.
Oh, also, I've noticed that at least with my panels, bird poop seems to be particularly bad. The dust that accrues doesn't seem to do much, but even a relatively small bit of bird poop will be almost as bad as weeds. Fortunately it's not terribly difficult to clean once it's dried.
But I like the branch and have plenty of full sun, so I haven't cut it.
However if you are using a string inverter you will want to wash all the ones on the same string in one go if you can, you don't really want them generating different voltage or you will miss out on a lot of power.
I'm thinking the best thing to do would be put a large battery in between the grid and my home and selectively recharge the battery with the solar. I believe that setup circumvents the fee since the only thing using energy is the battery, as though it were an off grid setup. I might consider not putting the entire home behind the battery but just the largest energy hogs, like the HVAC or others.
Does this make sense, are there existing setups like this and what are thoughts about something like this?
Thanks
I'm not saying this is bad. I love a good workaround for onerous laws & fees, but random Internet commenters aren't the best at determining what workaround will or will not pass muster if a judge gets involved.
Like someone said in another recent thread: "U.S. law though is highly non-autistic and what you were trying to do is just as important as what you superficially did." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49064242
You can do a whole home backup + solar panel input (aka ESS+PV) but it's much more expensive in parts and installation and is more complex. If you don't add grid interconnect it can be much cheaper as you can use "off-grid" parts (grid interconnect requires more expensive parts certified for certain standards).
But some jurisdictions may not allow cheaper "off-grid" parts/systems to be connected to the grid, even downstream. So an alternative would be to install a transfer switch, where you manually switch from the grid to off-grid. But then you literally have to choose whether you use the ESS+PV or the grid at any given time and manually throw a switch (you can't use grid to charge your system). And yes you can set this up for only specific circuits/appliances. Again it depends on your state and local laws.
AI can do most of the research for you. Keep a Git repo and add documentation and details to it over time, and you can build up an analysis of what works for you based on all available options, price comparisons, energy requirements, and local/state laws. It is unfortunately quite complicated because there are many options but not all will apply to your location. And before you do any of this, do a solar site survey to see if you can even reliably generate enough power from the sun!
See reddit's r/solarDIY. There are a lot of setups like this, either for full house power or partial. I have a relatively big server in my basemeent that I power this way, for example, with a battery system that acts as both UPS and a "charge the battery from solar and run off inverter when possible". Something like an off-grid EG4 is popular among the reddit crew as a way to manage this; the device tries to run locally but accepts a shore power feed from the grid so if you need it you draw grid power. No grid tie involved.
Entirely based on your jurisdiction, but that kind of zero-export requires the same permits and connection fee as a full net metering in mine. You can't end run the process by just being sneaky, electrical work needs permits and they'll either make you take it out (!!) or bring it into full compliance.
As an example, my utility is one of those ones that requires a separate manual disconnect, even though the vast majority of all-in-one inverters have a built in disconnect. It doesn't make any sense and it's at least two grand in permit + equipment, but that's the rule.
Some places don't even allow that, though.
Now you could pull particular items out of their grid. Just need the wires and panels to make sense. They would not care about that either. It is only if the panels are plugged into the grid they start to care. Downside is sometimes waiting for that battery to have enough juice to work. It goes faster than you think and some battery systems are decently expensive just by themselves, on top of the panels/inverters/controllers/install.