Solar Panel System Maintenance and Care — A Complete Guide
By: Steven Patterson
Tags: Green Energy, Climate Change, Solar Energy, Renewable Energy

So you’ve decided to invest in long term energy savings by jumping off the solar system cliff. Congratulations! The next step is protecting your investment with proper care and maintenance. Solar panels have an average life span of 25–30 years, but this doesn’t mean you can install and forget for 30 years.

Though solar panels don’t require the same level of care as your car or even your home furnace, there are some general maintenance tips to remember. You can begin this care and maintenance from day one by choosing a reputable installer. If you are leasing your panel system, the maintenance and care are often the leasing company’s responsibility.

Photo by Gustavo Fring from Pexels

System Maintenance

The system as a whole refers to the panels, inverter, and battery storage if that’s an option you’ve chosen. You are more likely to experience problems with your inverter before you experience problems with the panels themselves.

Most of the top-selling brands of solar inverters come with a warranty that can range anywhere from 10–25 years. This warranty generally covers manufacturer’s defects, bad parts, or failures outside of the user’s control. Inverter replacement is usually a free feature of those warranties, and some will even cover shipping. The cost of labor for installation may or may not be included. It’s important when choosing a solar system provider, to go over the fine points of your inverter’s warranty to determine what types of unforeseen malfunctions are covered. The panels will have a separate warranty from the manufacturer.

Panel Maintenance

Solar panels have very few moving parts, minimizing the risk of failure. Proper care begins before installation. Be sure there are no crumbling chimneys, dead trees, or other structures that could obstruct sunlight, or fall onto the panels, breaking or scratching them. Your installer should carefully inspect your rooftop and surrounding area to look for potential hazards to the panels or their productivity.

Thick, tempered glass forms a protective barrier over the photovoltaic panel itself. This tempered glass is designed to withstand an average hail storm, average snow load, rain, wind, and inclement weather without sustaining damage. The glass will have a metric rating in Pascals, sometimes called a “snow load”, that will tell you how much weight in snow it could hold without risking damage. That snow load rating should be listed in the product information when you purchase your panels. If you plan to install your panels in an area with copious amounts of accumulating snowfall, pay close attention to this snow load measurement, and try to keep it at 5400 pascals or above.

There is a polymer backing on the panel, referred to as a backsheet that keeps the PV Panel sealed against water, dust, and debris that could potentially cause electrical issues. Over time, or in very extreme conditions, those backsheets can degrade and water damage can cause short-circuiting. Backsheets are rated by the amount of wind load they can withstand and that information should be listed when you purchase your panels. A good way to maintain your solar energy system is to choose a panel with a high wind load rating at the time of purchase.

Image by Maddy Bris from Pixabay

PV Panel Cleaning

The thick tempered glass very rarely incurs damage but can get dirty or snow-covered, interfering with its ability to capture sunlight. This can be especially problematic if you live along a high traffic or trucking route. As a panel owner, you should check your panels periodically for dirt, moss, debris, or buildup of any kind. If your panels are at an angle, rainfall usually takes care of this problem on its own, requiring no action on your part.

If there seems to be a buildup of dirt that isn’t taken care of by rainfall or a garden hose, panel cleaning kits are available and come with an approved soap and a lint-free rag. If you’re worried about unsteady footing while cleaning rooftop panels, it’s best to invest in hiring a professional cleaning service for safety reasons. Never clean your solar panels with an unapproved, abrasive soap or cleaning apparatus, as the glass on the panels can become scratched and affect their overall efficiency.

Except in extreme snowfall circumstances, snow does not need to be manually cleared from your panels. Rooftop solar panels are designed with snowfall in mind (thus the snow load ratings). Soft snow rakes are available but take care to avoid the back of the panel or its electrical components. The black backing of the panel will cause snow to melt off of your solar panels faster than it melts off of your roof. If you decide you must clear snow from your panels, do so carefully, as warranties will most likely not cover damage from homeowners. Take safety precautions if clearing rooftop panels in icy weather, and consider hiring a professional.

Care and Maintenance are Minimal

Because we’ve covered so many ways that panels can be damaged, fail or break, one might come away thinking the risks outweigh the benefits. Let’s be clear that these instances of failure are very rare. The International Energy Agency published a 2014 study analyzing failure rates of photovoltaic systems and found that PV systems had a failure rate of 0.8%. This is very minimal, considering the millions of active panels that are installed worldwide. Have your panel and system inspected by your installer every 5–8 years for peace of mind, and enjoy your lifetime of energy savings!