“That’s a lot higher than I thought it would be. I was even thinking 10% would be a fantastic boost but that’s well above 10%. So according to my math that’s 17.85% boost”.
Today I wanted to do an experiment and see how much power I could restore on my solar panel system by cleaning the solar panels, but before we begin a little disclaimer I know this is not going to be the most scientific test there’s going to be liberties taken and there’s there may be some variables introduced into the mix that don’t make the data exact but I’m going to do the best that I can and I think that this will be eye-opening for some of us.
Ok so how we’re gonna test this today, if you’ve seen my solar shed redo series you’ve seen the production of this system and what it has been able to do over the past couple of weeks. Since I’ve got it finished the highest that I’ve ever seen this system go and I check fairly regularly because I’m pretty curious at this point but I’ve the highest I’ve seen it go is about 421 watts at very peak time of day.
So what we’re going to do is this: I’m going to go ahead and clean my solar panels the best that I can. So what I’m going to do, I’m gonna get up on a ladder, I’m going to shoot these off with just hose water. I’m going to get some soap on a broom and and clean these off the best that I can and then we’ll monitor this throughout the day and see what the highest production number is. It is a beautiful day outside with bright clear skies so we should have a good day to test this so let’s go ahead and get started.
So while I’m up here, a lot of you may have not have seen my solar panel system so just briefly these are 4-dm solar solar panels. All four of the units produce right around 600 watts production probably slightly less because they’re in series parallel and so they’ll they’ll knock down to the 145 watt level.
So here’s the good news it’s only 11:30 and we’re already up to 438 watts so it’s already made a difference I’m gonna watch it throughout the day off and on and try to get as good of a sample size as I can of the highest peak production and then we’ll try to convert that to a percentage and see what kind of difference that made.
Okay so what we just saw, it got up to 495 watts which is the highest that I’ve seen it ever go to this point. It may have eclipsed 500 at some point I don’t know I haven’t been standing here watching it the entire time but 495 is outstanding. That’s a lot higher than I thought it would be. I was even thinking 10% would be a fantastic boost but that’s well above 10%. So according to my math that’s 17.85% boost if you’d go from 420 watts to 495 watts so that’s well worth doing. Hopefully you guys have learned something I know I have. I had no idea it was that good. I will definitely be cleaning these things more often.
Notes: These panels had only been installed for 9 Months when this test was done