How to make your solar setup outlast your rig

Your solar setup is pretty robust, but it doesn’t mean it’s infallible. Here’s some solar panel cleaning and maintenance tips to ensure you get the most from your setup.

They say the poor man pays twice, but I’ve gotta be honest. I take a little umbrage at that, and not just as a poor man myself. The first? It’s 2023, gosh darnit, women can be poor too. The second? I reckon that saying should be expanded to encompass other poor decision-making that leads to paying twice as well.

While buying quality kit should lead to better results and better longevity, it doesn’t happen without a little preventative maintenance too. It was this spaghetti of thoughts running through my head recently as I looked at my crusty old solar panels, which clearly needed some cleaning. Caked in red centre dust and with deep grooves into their protective layer from loading up the kayaks a little too aggressively. Surely they weren’t working as well as they used to, right?

We’ve done the research and lent on decades of Redarc experience to come up with cleaning, maintenance and other tips and tricks to make your solar panels outlast your tow-tug.

Keep ‘em clean

High up on the roof of your tow-tug or caravan, it’s easy to think of a solar panel as a set-and-forget kind of affair, and while that may be close to true, there are a few things you need to do on the road and back at home to keep them firing on all cylinders. No matter what type of panel you’re using, they all work by absorbing photons from the sun, and then using internal cells to transform that energy into voltage. Anything stopping that process results in the panels being useless.

It might seem relatively minor, but dust and dirt create a physical barrier blocking the cells on your solar panels, so yes, they need cleaning. Small dust deflectors may keep them clean a little longer, but even just a quick blast with compressed air can get a panel working more efficiently, especially if you’re travelling in outback dusty conditions.

Don’t be afraid to get a little more in-depth with your solar panels too, especially if it’s been a while between cleaning. While you’ve got the pressure washer fired up cleaning your rig, run it gently over the solar panels up on the roof. Key word being gently. Don’t blast them or you risk getting water past the seals. Depending on the panels you’re using, they may or may not be able to handle soap. If they can, just wash them the same as the rest of the rig. If not, a quick wipe-down with a wet rag will suffice.

Keep ‘em damage free

This one might seem a little simple too, and for good reason, looking after your solar panels is a simple process. While you’re up there cleaning your solar panels, run your eyes over them to make sure they’re staying damage free from below as well as above. Just like corrugations can play havoc, rattling bolts and nuts loose on your bull bars and suspension, so too can they affect the mounts on your solar panels. If a panel has come off its mounts even slightly, the corrugations could cause other accessories nearby or even the mounts themselves to rub and cause efficiency losses or even wiring concerns.

Try your hardest to prevent damage up top too. Just like mud, dirt, or other contaminants, scratches and rub marks can seriously affect your panel’s performance and even lead to premature failure. Due to their flat design, it’s common for people to strap camping kit ontop of them, like kid’s bikes, swags, or even firewood. It doesn’t take long motoring down the road for this to cause irreversible damage to the panel.

Heat is the enemy, in more ways than one

There’s two different ways heat can knock about your solar panels and it’s worth keeping an eye out on both to ensure maximum longevity and efficiency. The first is physical radiant heat off the panels themselves, a problem, ironically enough, that’s more common in full sunlight. The panels themselves typically operate at maximum capacity around the 15c-25c mark. Outside of that range, they can lose ¼ to ½ a per cent efficiency for every degree temperature rise of the panel itself, not the ambient air. It makes sense then to maximise airflow around the panels, allowing them to stay as cool as possible with maximum sunlight. In short, keep leaf litter away from them, and maximum airflow to get the most out of them.

The other heat factor to consider is shoddy wiring. Undersized cabling and poor connections can all lead to unnecessary resistance and heat build-up in the wiring. This one is pretty simple, but ensure when the panels are installed they’re installed with correctly gauged wiring and reliable cable connections. If they start looking like they’ll cause issues, chances are they’re causing issues.

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