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Solar Electric Panels, The Best Maintenance Tips

Although your homemade solar electric panels usually do not require maintenance, here you will find some tips that can help you to be sure your system is working properly and that lasts as much as possible (thus saving you more money). If you want to keep your solar panels in perfect condition, keep reading.

Clean Panels=More Money Saved

The best tip you can get is to keep your panels clean. You should check regularly, like every month for example, and remove and dust, leaves or mug. You can clean them using a sponge or with a garden hose.

Bad Moisture

Although your solar panel cannot be affected by moisture, your backup battery, diodes and inverter can. So be sure your system is properly sealed and no moisture has grow on those parts. Before manipulation those elements, be sure you disconnect the system from the power grid to avoid any accident.

Keep your panels free of shade

If you happen to have a large system, you will have bypass diodes that will allow the current to pass around the shaded areas without causing any harm to the system but on the smaller system you may not have this kind of devices so is always a good idea to keep your system free of shade.

Consider using a 12V system

If you notice a drop in the energy from the night until the next morning, there could be a problem with the blocking diode in your setup. You should check that the diode is working fine and in case you do not have such a piece, consider disconnecting your system at night. Drops in energy produced may be also caused by problems with the wiring, failures with the inverter and diodes.

Keeping your solar electric panels working is not really complicated but analyzing your system from time to time can help you maintain your panels for years to come.

About the Author

I used to work as an electrician until I retired a couple of years ago. I moved to Spain and now I can focus in one of my passions: solar energy and its applications to home use. You can visit my solar electric panels and photovoltaic solar panels blogs.

How to build a solar panel part 10