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Home/Solar Panel Cleaning

Maintenance

Solar panel cleaning

Solar panel cleaning removes the pollen, salt film, dust, lichen and bird droppings that block light from reaching your modules. In Florida, once a year suits most homes — more often near the coast, under trees, or where birds have got under the array.

We clean with soft brushes and water, never pressure washers or detergents, and we inspect the array while we are up there.

Cleaning is straightforward work and we will be honest about when it is worth doing. Light dust costs you almost nothing in production, and Florida rain handles it. What rain does not handle is salt film on coastal homes, lichen growth, construction and agricultural dust, and bird droppings — and droppings punch above their weight, because one opaque spot can pull down an entire string rather than just the panel it landed on.

The part that matters more than the cleaning

Here is the thing worth knowing: the visit is more valuable than the wash. Getting on the roof puts a solar technician directly in front of an array that nobody has looked at closely in years, and that is when the real problems surface.

What we routinely find on a cleaning visit:

  • Critters under the array. Squirrels, rats and birds nest in the gap between modules and roof. They chew wiring. This is a fire and failure risk and it is invisible from the ground — the fix is critter guard around the array perimeter.
  • Modules that are not producing. A dead panel or a failed microinverter does not announce itself. Homeowners without working monitoring often have no idea.
  • Mounting and hardware. Corroded lag bolts, loose clamps, degraded grounding — worse near the coast.
  • Cracked or delaminating modules. Hail, debris and age. Cloudy patches inside the laminate mean water has got in.
  • Solar thermal that has quietly failed. On homes that also have pool heating or a solar water heater, we frequently find those have not run in a long time.
  • Roof condition. If the roof under the array is near the end of its life, better to know now than after you have paid to clean panels that are about to come off for a reroof.
Critter guard mesh fitted around the perimeter of a rooftop solar array
Critter guard fitted around an array perimeter. Nesting and chewed wiring under panels is one of the most common things we find on a cleaning visit.

How we clean

Soft brushes and water. No pressure washing, which can drive water past module seals and into junction boxes. No detergents or solvents, which can damage the anti-reflective coating on the glass. Where water quality is very hard we take care not to leave mineral spotting behind, which would defeat the purpose.

We work early where we can. Cleaning glass that has been baking in Florida sun is bad for the modules and bad for the result.

What you get back

A clean array, and a plain account of what we saw — including anything that needs attention and anything that does not. If your panels did not really need cleaning, we would rather tell you that and keep you as a customer than take the money and say nothing.

Solar cleaning questions

Does cleaning solar panels actually increase production?

Yes, though how much depends entirely on how dirty they were. A light film of dust costs you very little. Heavy pollen, salt film, bird droppings or lichen block light properly and the losses become significant — and bird droppings are worse than their size suggests because a single opaque spot can drag down a whole string rather than just one panel. If your array is only lightly dusty, we will tell you cleaning is not worth your money.

How often should solar panels be cleaned in Florida?

For most Florida homes, once a year is sensible. Sooner if you are under trees, near the coast where salt film builds, close to agriculture or construction dust, or if you have a bird or squirrel problem under the array. Florida rain rinses light dust off reasonably well; it does not touch salt film, lichen or droppings.

Can I clean my own solar panels?

You can, and if the array is reachable from the ground with a soft brush and plain water, that is fine. What we would advise against is walking a roof you are not equipped for, using pressure washers, or using detergents — pressure can force water past module seals, and the wrong chemicals can damage the anti-reflective coating. A fall from a Florida roof costs more than any cleaning.

What do you find up there besides dirt?

Regularly: critter nesting under the array, chewed wiring, loose or corroded mounting hardware, cracked or delaminating modules, conduit pulling away, and modules that are not producing at all. We are on the roof anyway with the array in front of us, so we report what we see. Whether you act on it is your call.

Do you clean solar pool heating collectors as well?

Pool heating collectors do not need cleaning the way glass modules do — they are absorbers, not light collectors, and surface dust barely affects them. What they do need is checking for leaks, mounting condition and flow, which we can do on the same visit.

Book solar panel cleaning

Give us the address and roughly how many panels, if you know. We will confirm scheduling and what the visit covers.

You do not need to know your equipment brand or model. We will work that out.

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