The YouTuber Manuel runs the channel “Family Electrified” and describes his experiences with a dirty solar system. He has been using these since November 2021 and has not cleaned them properly once over the same period. For a test, he ran the performance of clean and dirty modules against each other.
In general, there are various factors that cause solar systems to fail in producing electricity due to dirt. According to experts, heavily contaminated modules can reduce their efficiency by up to 20 percent or more. Regular monitoring, cleaning and maintenance are therefore crucial to ensure maximum efficiency and service life of the system.
Main effects of dirt:
However, the test by YouTuber Manuel documented that these consequences do not occur in every case. He installed his solar system so that it doesn’t just have four different orientations. He can also have the performance of each module shown separately.
To check to what extent pollution (in this case, among other things, lime, bird droppings and residues of Sahara dust) affects his solar system, he selected a total of three pairs of modules, each of which has a different orientation, but whose individual modules (A and B) are approximately the same have the same performance, namely over the periods weekly, monthly and annually.
The YouTuber then cleaned all components of the solar system except for the selected B modules in order to determine over an observation period of one week to what extent the performance of the cleaned specimens improved or whether both still delivered the same performance.
At the same time, Manuel emphasized that he hopes that the test will at least show a noticeable trend, as it is not scientifically based due to numerous other influencing factors that were not taken into account.
According to Manuel, in the week before cleaning, Module A produced 4.66 kilowatt hours (kWh) and Module B produced around 4.89 kWh. In the week after the cleaning of module A, it produced 7.41 kWh, while module B recorded 7.46 kWh – and therefore slightly more: “So you can see quite clearly that the cleaning simply didn’t achieve anything. “
According to the YouTuber, several of his followers were already expecting such a result in the comments. But even if the performance effect is low, he believes that removing snow in winter, for example, can still make sense. However, he would make this dependent on the time period, as he does not expect a major loss of the solar system even after a day of complete snow cover.
Sources: YouTube/Family Electrified
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The original for this article “Manuel cleans his solar system after years – the result leaves him stunned” comes from futurezone.de.