Solar Panel Cleaning On Corn Dryer In Basingstoke, Hampshire

Clean Solar Solutions recently cleaned the solar panels on a farm near Basingstoke, Hampshire.  The farm, located at Crondall, had 200 solar panels located on the roof of it’s corn dryer.  

We were contacted by the farm owner, Mr Porter and he informed us that his solar panels had been installed for over years and they had not been cleaned.  He knew that his solar panels would not be producing electricity to their maximum potential due to the dust that had accumulated.

We were able to access the roof where the solar panels were located by using a telehandler provided by Mr Porter.  This machine is used for a variety of jobs already on the farm and Mr Porter was glad he had found another application for the machine.  The telehandler got our operative up to to roof height and from a cage mounted at the front of the machine, we were able to clean the solar panels using our telescopic solar panel cleaning pole.

As you can see from the picture below, the solar panels were covered in numerous pieces of grime.  Each of these puts that part of the solar panel in the shade and shading is bad news for solar panels.  Solar panels are wired together in strings or rows.  So if one cell on one panel has enough shading, this has a knock on effect to the efficiency of the other solar panels in the string, or row.  Put simply, the voltage output for cell 1 is the voltage input for cell 2 next to it in the row.  Because the input in cell 2 is restricted, then picks up more restriction from its own shading it’s output is also lowered.  In turn, the input in cell 3 is restricted too and so on.  The array as a whole does not perform as bad as the worst performing panel, but research has shown that shading can easily reduce the output of an array by 50%.  A more detailed discussion of solar shading and solar panel cleaning can be found here.

We completed the cleaning of the solar panels on this site in less than a day, meaning minimal disruption to Mr Porter and occupying his telehandler and operator for only a short period of time.  We are now very confident that Mr Porter’s solar panels will produce well during the mild winter we are having and look forward to carrying out his next clean in Spring.

We have carried out solar panel cleaning in other areas near Basingstoke.  If you would like a quote for your solar panel cleaning, please contact us.