Clean your solar panels, gain some wattage

My small solar-electric system has been installed for about a year and a half. The system has four 160-watt monocrystalline solar panels. Cleaning the panels is something I've been meaning to do for awhile, but myriad other projects have been fighting for higher priority.

This morning I finally decided to clean the panels. I wiped each of them down with a wet paper towel. According to my metering system, I gained an average of five incoming watts per panel.

Let's do the math.

Here where I live, we have pretty long days in the summer. The longest day is about 16 hours long. For purposes of calculation, I'll use a figure of 10 hours per day, since most days are shorter than 16 hours and because the panels don't get much sun early in the morning and late in the evening. So let's say the daily per-panel gain is 10 x 5 watts: 50 watts. There are four panels, so the daily overall gain is 4 x 50 watts: 200 watts. That is a significant amount of wattage. For example, it's enough to power my 5.8 cu. ft. 12-volt fridge for an entire day, keep my cell phone charged for an entire day, and power my tablet while I stream Netflix for 2-3 hours in the evening.

The calculations above pertain to summer. The gain would be less during the other three seasons, but still substantial.

So clean your panels!

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Clean your solar panels, gain some wattage