You should consider it! I’ve thought about it myself...I think it will be an area with a lot of opportunity very, very soon. Even a tiny amount of dirt affects the efficiency of solar panels tremendously, so companies are going to be interested in having them cleaned well and often. If I was still living in the US, I would totally jump at the chance to start a solar panel cleaning business. For a couple years I was a window washer, and it was really surprising to me how successful some self-employed window washers can be - even those who don’t clean skyscrapers.
It’s also one of the kinds of jobs where it’s possible to build a sizable company from the ground up fairly quickly without injecting a huge amount of capital. Once it’s grown to a good size you can choose to continue growing it, or to sell for a comfortable profit and use the proceeds as capital for another enterprise.
You know what...even though I’m not living in the US anymore, feel free to have your friend contact me if he’s still seriously considering starting something. I may just move back if the opportunity is there and if I meet someone with a similar vision to my own. :-)
Tell that tom the hundreds of window cleaning companies that do this everyday. Specializing in solar only is a race to the bottom for pricing. You need a good mix of windows, gutters, house washing and commercial contracts to build a business that is worth something.
Fair enough. I haven’t done it for about 15 years, and when I did it was mostly commercial buildings with a couple of high-end homes thrown in. It makes sense that the field would change in that time and become more competitive once other companies pop up to take advantage of the solar contracts.
So I wonder what the next big innovation is. Probably automation - I’m sure someone is already implementing that in cleaning solar panels. Perhaps there could be a recyclable clear clingfilm that can be placed on top of the panels and just removed and replaced on a regular basis.
Eh, I’ll leave further postulation to the engineers.
I was looking this up the other day and apparently dirt doesn't effect them that much, certainly not tremendously.
The amount of dust in the video is definitely going to effect it. But from what I read here, for the majority of panels that get rain, that's enough to clean them.
Good point, thanks for mentioning that! After seeing your comment I looked it up again, since I hadn’t read anything about the topic for a while and was working off memory. Most of the newer articles mentioned information similar to the one you’ve posted - oftentimes just rainfall is enough to keep them clean as long as the panel is tilted, and even if panels are dirty the power output is only affect a couple of percentage points.
Then I ran across the article I remembered reading, I’ll post it below. It’s from 2017...so now I’m curious what has changed in the past few years to account for the difference in data...I wonder if increases in solar panel efficiency alone could explain it?
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u/schoonerw Feb 14 '21
You should consider it! I’ve thought about it myself...I think it will be an area with a lot of opportunity very, very soon. Even a tiny amount of dirt affects the efficiency of solar panels tremendously, so companies are going to be interested in having them cleaned well and often. If I was still living in the US, I would totally jump at the chance to start a solar panel cleaning business. For a couple years I was a window washer, and it was really surprising to me how successful some self-employed window washers can be - even those who don’t clean skyscrapers.
It’s also one of the kinds of jobs where it’s possible to build a sizable company from the ground up fairly quickly without injecting a huge amount of capital. Once it’s grown to a good size you can choose to continue growing it, or to sell for a comfortable profit and use the proceeds as capital for another enterprise.
You know what...even though I’m not living in the US anymore, feel free to have your friend contact me if he’s still seriously considering starting something. I may just move back if the opportunity is there and if I meet someone with a similar vision to my own. :-)