alt Hacker NewsOh, okay. Does a warranty cover sweeping snow off your panels and washing them many times throughout the years? I guess if one does not value time, then solar panels could be considered "free" - but this is a bizarre sacrifice.
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Where are you getting this maintenance schedule from?
I haven’t touched ours, they are clean and have been going fine with zero maintenance, though admittedly it’s only been a year.
I got solar panels installed two years ago and I've washed them once. I'm still getting great production. Are you trying to convince yourself that maintaining solar panels is difficult? Because it isn't.
You don't bother with the snow. Winter is low production energy due to the suns positioning - it melts in the spring and your back to producing. Most solar power is between march - september anyways.
Washing solar panels _at all_ would be fairly unusual, and arguably pretty pointless, particularly given they're so cheap now; you're looking at, optimistically, a 5% efficiency improvement, but many studies say more like 1% in practice.
If you're in a place that gets significant snowfall such that they're often covered then production during winter is likely to be fairly marginal anyway, so may not be worth your while.
Why do you think that level of maintenance is needed?
Lies. I'm using solar panels since 2022, still producing same peak energy and not cleaned them once. Some companies/electricians will try to sell you a cleaning and maintenance service for ~80-100EUR/year here but it's basically throwing money.