Technology

In this section you will find a list of way of cleaning solar panels and it's evaluation.

1. Manual cleaning
2. Cleaning with high-pressure
   
3. Cleaning with demi-water 
4. Semi-automatic cleaning robots
5. Big-scale cleaning by a brush-hand attached to a car

Technology	performance m2/h	Efectivity (quality)	Perks	Disadvantages
Manual cleaning	50-100	good	for small installations	slow, ineffective
High-pressure	75-150	bad	-	danger of damaging panels
Demi-water	150-300	perfect	High effetivity, quality, antistatic effect	-
Robots	50-150	good	In future a good way how to clean	nowadays robots are ineffective
Big-scale cleaning	300+	bad	Cheap	low quality, danger of damaging panels

As you can see, it is clearly cleaning with demi-water machines, which is the best way to clean solar panels nowadays. Why? In the following lines you will find out detailed information about each and every technique of cleaning.

Manual cleaning

Manual cleaning can be used to clean small installations up to 500m2 by yourselves. Even for such cleaning, one should be properly equiped - Lewi equipment for windows cleaning can be used for such a cleaning. If you need to reach panels on your roof, telescopic poles will help you to do so. Manual cleaning is not proper way to clean big installations over 500m2. It is ineffective and its dangerous, if made by inexperienced worker. Additionaly you would need a lot of water to clean a really small area, which makes this technique unusable in big scale.

High-pressure

We strongly discourage from using high-pressure for cleaning solar panels. High-pressure is the worst technique of cleaning solar panels. Worst thing about high-pressure is that while cleaning, there is high chance of damaging the panels. Both glass surface and connecting materials (silicon). Glass surface can be damaged by micro-cracks, which are not visible, but they grow as time goes by. Even if the damage is not visible, it is permanent and will result into destruction of the whole panel. Producers (even when not warning about this fact) will not accept any warranty claims, when the surface was physicaly damaged.

Demi-water

Cleaning solar panels with demi-water is the best solution in present day. It is gentle and effective way of cleaning. You can use it anywhere, thanks to systems like Qleen. It is applied to surface by diffusion. Demineralized water have several important cleaning abilities itself. While it is trying to absorb minerals to get back to its natural state, it easily dissolves biological dirt and clean it down the panels. It reacts better with chemicals, it leaves no stains on the surface and mostly cleaning with demi-water have antistatical effect - as you clean all the dirt off the panels, any dirt applied to the surface later will have hard times to stick to it as there is nothing for it to be sticked to. Therefore rains have more powerfull effect on cleaning the solar panels later for several months. We strongly recommend this technique of cleaning.

Robots

Robots are machines of future, in this industry literally. Of course there are several types of robots on the market. However they got several problems when applied. They are in no way completely automatic, even the most advanced robots need asistance - either in controling or helping the robot to swap from one row of panels to another. Therefore there is still labour needed to work with such a robot. The main problem is that their effectivity is low when in comparsion with other techniques (demi-water cleaning with qleen have up to 6times better effectivity). Last but not least is the price. Robots are overpriced, because the research needed for their producting is expensive. We believe that robots will have their place in cleaning panels in future, however not now.

Big scale cleaning

Cleaning solar panels while using a hydraulic hand is an alternative. It can't be used everywhere - many solar powerplants are built on a small space, therefore there is not enough space between rows for a car + x meters to pass by and clean it. Additionaly this technique is not yet perfected and when not used on a pricesly flat ground, damage of the panels can be made. As the car pass the panels with a cleaning brush rotating on it, it needs to be stable. However most of the big powerplants are made on a field with no or poor ground adjustment made and its not flat enough for this cleaning to be safe. As technology moves forwards, this technique is improving as well.

Solarjob
Thanks to an unique system of tags of quality, solarjob offers you a quick overview of technologies, which one company has at it's disposal. Simply follow the company's profile and check the which tag is active to find out, what technology does that company use for cleaning.