{"id":4835,"date":"2019-08-20T17:31:53","date_gmt":"2019-08-20T22:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/?p=4835"},"modified":"2019-08-20T17:33:17","modified_gmt":"2019-08-20T22:33:17","slug":"do-you-need-to-clean-your-solar-panels-in-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/20\/do-you-need-to-clean-your-solar-panels-in-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you need to clean your solar panels in Florida?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/xMDtg2XTjhg?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Living in Florida, we get a lot of rain that does a good job of keeping our solar panels mostly clean. To see if extra scrubbing was needed, I cleaned 1\/2 of my solar panels after they had been installed for 11 months using a scrubbing brush and dish detergent.<\/p>\n<p>The panels that I cleaned went up in power production by an average of 0.11 kWh\/month. [0.11 kWh * 36 panels * 12 months = 47.52 kWh of extra power over an entire year&#8230;assuming the cleaning effect persists after the first month.] So this is a very small amount of power (about $6 worth at 13 cents per kWh.) in return for an hour of scrubbing. [And this assumes that the cleaning benefit lasts for a full year, which may not be the case.]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I would suggest only scrubbing your (Florida) panels every few years unless you notice a drop in performance.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You can download my data and simplistic analysis in the attached open document spreadsheet: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/SolarPanelCleaningExperiment.ods\">SolarPanelCleaningExperiment<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-4836\" src=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Graph-300x175.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"175\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Graph-300x175.png 300w, https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Graph-500x291.png 500w, https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/Graph.png 710w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Living in Florida, we get a lot of rain that does a good job of keeping our solar panels mostly clean. To see if extra scrubbing was needed, I cleaned 1\/2 of my solar panels after they had been installed &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/2019\/08\/20\/do-you-need-to-clean-your-solar-panels-in-florida\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[72],"class_list":["post-4835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-projects","tag-solar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4835"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4840,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4835\/revisions\/4840"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.summet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}