Solar Panel Mistakes! Cleaning And Cooling Output Tests!

so welcome back everybody in today's video we're going to do a fun test here if you've watched the channel for any length of time you know we're slowly taking our structures off grid with solar and I have been a huge proponent of do not Mount Your panels on your roof when you can avoid it and there's a big reason why they need maintenance and they need cleaning so in today's test we're going to test a couple of things here we're going to clean our panels and see how much we're actually losing I'm going to show you the build up there how much they're blocking the sun we've got a beautiful day to do it no clouds in the sky we're also going to test the cooling effect right here this is something a lot of people don't think about we may do a future build on this but I want to show y'all all right y'all so I get it some of y'all do not have the yard space to mount panels but when you can I highly suggest you do it most people Mount them up on the roof and they forget about them for 5 10 15 20 years and they don't see the slow reduction in output well panels do wear out with time but it's mainly because all the buildup on them and you don't clean them when they're up there that's not convenient when on a house or a shop that's why I'm a huge fan of putting them down here on the ground we're about to build another very large on the ground solar array just for this reason so come up here and take a look at this we're in Florida we've been getting tons of rain here lately but even with all the rain look at the buildup on these panels that is pollen and just everything else on them so the rain can't even wash that off anymore they're just stuck So today we're going to clean these panels up I actually have to put them up we've got major storms on the way and they're calling for a potential hail well that's the Krypton to panels isn't it so we're going to fold them up out of the way I built this to do that and not receive any hell damage but first since it's such a beautiful day this is a perfect day to test this let's go inside look at the power input that we're getting right now before cleaning and more importantly before we wet them cooling panels down typically will increase their output some people have suggested why don't want I build a misting system in the future we may do that for a fun project but right now let's clean them let me show you the difference just the cleaning aspect and maintenance alone is the huge reason why I like my panels on the ground all right so let's come into our solar electric room excuse the mess I test a lot of equipment in here so what I'm currently running is split phase 240 volts I'm running two 6500 W Orient power inverters right here and we've got half of that array coming in one inverter half coming into the other and you can see got a little bit of a mess here because I've been testing on the wall batteries I've been testing s rack batteries by the way their most recent battery I've been testing is this monster right here 11,700 WS this is made a huge difference in what I can run in my shop I can kick on my big 240 volt compressor now I can run a welder this has so much capacity and output here that these don't trip even when running welders and 240 volt compressors and I was running my plasma cutter and compressor at the same time the other day by the way they got some CS going on put some links down in the description that's not what today's video is about but just want to let y'all know I always like giving you updates I've been running this stuff for well over a year especially that first inverter and uh love the system we're eventually I think just going to go with server rack batteries in here and build a much larger system all right so let's take a look at input 867 Watts that's pretty good that's a 2400 WT array by the way it's early in the morning you can see it's holding perfect no clouds in the sky this one's pulling 874 very very consistent so 875 holding plus 866 let's add that together real quick 1741 Watts at 10:00 in the morning that's really good all right so we're going to make this test happen really quickly so people can't claim oh the Sun moved and you're getting higher output we're going to do all this within a few minutes the first thing we're going to do Let's Wet these panels down which I need to do before I wash them and look at the cooling effect as panels heat up they actually lose efficiency being it's early in the morning they're not super hot but cooling them down with water believe it or not will actually jump our power up now where you really see this is in the summertime when it's like 900° here in Florida I've actually tested this before out of curiosity I just love doing things like this on a 2400 wat array last summer I could come out here and cool them off and I typically seen a 100 watt [Music] jump all right let's run inside real quick and see if that cooled them off enough to see a difference in the summertime a quick spray like that does make a difference all right it's been literally 2 minutes since I last was in here 917 Watts don't tell me cooling them off don't work 939 watts how about that y'all 945 wow y'all we got well over 100 Wat increase now we're at1 1875 from 1741 so what's that 134 Watts increase so now we got a good Baseline let's run up there and quickly and I mean very quickly wash these to see any increase we'll try to make this happen in like 3 to 4 minutes perfect day to do this test all right let's get all this nasty pollen and Gunk off of these things and to keep from getting any soap scum built up probably going to do about four to six panels at a time time then wash it off then move on to the next ones I don't want this stuff to dry in the sun all right I'm trying to make this happen really quick y'all which means I'm probably not going to do as good of a cleaning job as I could all right looks like most of that pollen and other buildup is gone oh yeah big difference between the clean ones and the dirty ones all all right y'all I've done this in just a few minutes trying to be as quick as I possibly can make sure I got all this soap scum off all right does cleaning make a difference 983 we're up again 1,000 Watts so we just jumped up another 108 Watts all right so I've already forgot the math between cooling the panels and cleaning the panels we just increased our output 10% on this size right here now the cooling we can't really trust that too much can we but the cleaning we immediately seen an effect now I clean my panels kind of often this is just a little bit of build up you know usually the rain and everything else will clean them but I try to clean them a couple times a year at least what about your panels when's the last time you looked at them most people put them on the roof and they forget about them until there's damage and you slowly get build up and you slowly get a decrease in the output of your panels input to your system and you don't notice it over time most people think oh it's just the panel wearing that breaking down because they do slowly degrade over the lifetime of the panel but with that said you're probably losing more for the fact that you're not getting up there and cleaning your panels then the panels actually degrading over a period of time this is the reason I want mine on the ground quick swap out after a potential hell storm like we're getting quick wire connections checking a lot less aggravation with codee when you put them on the roofs you have to do rapid shutdowns and other stuff there's a big benefit to doing on the ground but again I get it not everybody can do it they don't look as good on the ground unless you have the space and not everybody has the space all right so look at this we just built this privacy fence we're doing a big outdoor area over here look at the room I have now again it's 10:00 in the morning look how much sun I got we're going to put like in another 3 to 4,000 watt solar array right here that we can either run into our emergency system in the house or trench and run back out here to the shop and add to these inverters they can handle way more than I currently have so we're going to more than double our system the shop will stay 100% off grid so here's the other thing you got to think about I already make enough power with this system right here to run my shop no problems when the sun is out that's the key but what people don't often think about you over panel your system which we're about to do for the cloudy days cuz I'm still pulling in solar on cloudy days but it's greatly reduced well if I can d double or triple what I pull in on a cloudy day that's that much less times that I have to swap the grid to charge my system and again I only do that rarely a couple times a month we're blessed with sun here in Florida other big benefits to Mountain on the ground versus the roof homeowners insurance people there's a lot of homeowners insurance that's no longer covering people with roof mounted solar panels roof leaks potential damage up there structural damage to the home Etc yada yada yada the wiring the rapid shutdown require requirements the code now you still may have to have some of that on the ground there's no doubt about that but when you're building your system or thinking about solar I highly suggest try to find a spot on ground that you can do that there's so many benefits to on ground there's a couple benefits to the roof too mainly being out of sight out of mine looks a whole lot better but again you're not going to maintain them when they're up there on that roof are you or most likely not or you're going to hire somebody and it's going to cost you a pile of money when you could come down here and clean them in what 3 minutes all right so here we are down at the panels that's running this shop it's completely off- grid 100% and always has been this is where I'll do all my wood processing where we have our bulk fuel storage that uses 120 volt pumps so it's very important that we keep power out here we have lights and other things as well you see I keep these panels low on the ground and these are actually bifacial panels if you're not familiar with them we did some tests a while back so you can get Reflection from underneath or from the back side and because these don't have a coating on the back side you can see these panels can collect light from both sides now I don't have a hose down here so we're just going to focus on the front today but you see all the buildup pollen and everything else on these all right so let's run over to my system real quick pull some specs we'll just run out here clean them and rinse them so we're going to get the cooling effect as well as the cleaning effect but let's see if we see a jump out here on these types of panels all right so if we come in my little room here again I'm running an Orient power system with a 5,000 hour battery 6500 W inverter plenty of power to run our Diesel and gas pumps and everything else out here so right now we're currently pulling in 611 Watts staying nice and consistent 615 let's just call it 615 all right let's run out here wash these real quick rinse them off run back and see if we see an increase from 615 all right see how quick and easy this is with everything on the ground I'll come back down and get the back sides of these at another time so we could see even more of an increase than I'm about to show you if any if I doing the backside but I'm might have to rig up a sprayer with some water to come down here and be able to wash all that soap off the backside all right let's quickly rinse these off I should have just enough water to do that all right let's go see what kind of effect we got got here much cleaner panels and a little bit of cooling effect going on with the water all right what kind of increase do we see here and I keep in mind this is a much smaller system so went from 615 to 665 that's not bad we just picked up 50 Watts on a much much smaller system so yeah increase out here as well again cooling effect has something to do with it but I think it's common sense to tell you when you have a dirty panel that needs to be clean so it can pull in all the sunlight that it can well you're not going to be as efficient with a dirty panel all right y'all that was a fun little test so now thanks to this severe weather on the way they're calling for major tornado risk in our area but they keep screaming hail storms hail storms hail storms yep that's one of the drawbacks to solar no doubt about that so we're going to disconnect all this we've got an emergency backup system in the house we're going to go make sure it's fully charged I'm going to charge up my system that's out in the shop before I put those panels up and we may be out in our storm Shelter tonight the beauty of the storm shelter is it's powered off the shop where I have a huge amount of battery capacity we could stay out there for honestly a couple of days before we deplete those batteries all right fingers crossed we don't get any damage tonight and into tomorrow time to break all this down thought I'd bring you alone I love experimenting doing fun little things like this that was actually a bigger increase than I was expecting uh on that other system which I mean hey any power is free Power that we got right here cleaning your system makes a big difference make sure you set your system up for yearly maintenance and honestly I'd be prepared to wash and clean them several times a year all right hopefully this helped you as you plan out your future system drop a comment below if you have any questions or any other tests that you want to see catch you on the next video

Channel: The Kelley's Country Life

Views: 44,655

Keywords: farming, farm, farmstead, homestead, homesteading, john deere, john deere 4066r, firewood, chainsaw, chainsaws, stihl chainsaws, garden, gardening, country living, stihl, stihl MS170, cutting firewood, sharpening chainsaw, polaris ranger, cutting grass, mowing, wood chipper, pto chipper, woodmaxx, woodmaxx chipper, log splitter, stihl ms260 pro, pto wood chipper, food plots, barndo, barndominium, pole barn house, building a pole barn house, american cls, solar, solar power, off grid power

Id: TROKsQbZGVU

Length: 13min 23sec (803 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2024