February Is Solar Power Check-Up Time

One of the Easiest Ways to Protect Your Solar Power System

And ensure it’s operating at its optimum level – is to have a check-up regularly (e.g. February-March is a good time of year for a service).

This includes having your panels cleaned.

Things like bird droppings, dirt, dust and mould can quickly accumulate on your solar panels.

When a layer of particulates forms over a panel, it restricts the ability to absorb the sun’s energy and produce electricity. This can reduce your system’s performance by 30%+/-

Don’t try to clean the panels yourself as household cleaning materials can damage solar cells – and if you’re not used to working at heights it can be dangerous…. so any panel cleaning should be done by an experienced technician with the right equipment and products.

Faulty Solar Systems Present Serious Risks

Our solar technicians have had to attend numerous solar system faults this summer.

We’ve already had to send electricians out to resolve faulty and dangerous isolators, failed inverters and damaged wiring.

We had to inspect and deal with major faults for both obscure and better known brands. Many problems can occur at both the inverter, and harder to reach areas – like your roofing.

Solar Inverters are very complex pieces of equipment and can develop a variety of faults.

Inverters usually make little noise and are typically not in the main living areas, and so they can develop problems without the residents ever realizing.

Householders commonly only find out when they receive a huge power bill – so it pays to have a solar power system service, to check the inverters and other components.

New Solar Technologies Deliver Substantial Savings

Microinverters can remove many of the obstacles to system flexibility and performance, common in standard solar systems.

Rather than one inverter for a whole system, a Microinverter can be attached to a single panel. This means (unlike a standard inverter) in the event of a problem with one panel, all the others can continue operating normally.

Microinverters also allow easy upgrading (add more or different panels) and a simpler installation process, as lower voltages mean no special DC conduit cabling is needed (240v compared to 600v).

Microinverters also last substantially longer than standard DC Solar Inverters.