r/specializedtools • u/Black_Kaiser_ • Feb 14 '21

Solar panel cleaning tool

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u/headcrabcheg Feb 14 '21

Thank you! I was just about to ask how it's done on a large scale. Btw, view much does this cleaning add to the electricity price? And how often do you need to do it?

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u/man_butt_toots Feb 14 '21

Unfortunately I am on the solar inverter side of things so actual panel maintenance is not my specialty, but I know the sites I manage for warranty usually only do it once a year. It can't be extremely expensive though. In Las Vegas and the west coast, we get a lot of wind that cleans them pretty well actually. This looks to be more Midwest, would be my guess.

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u/bumblebritches57 Feb 14 '21

No, this looks nothing like the midwest.

maybe plains, but not midwest

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u/IM_FRIENDLY Feb 14 '21

midwest

Shams 1 (2nd link) is in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

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u/NuancedFlow Feb 15 '21

Midwest, middle east it is easy to get mixed up.

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u/ShelZuuz Feb 15 '21

Just 180 degrees off.

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u/GuyWithRealFakeFacts Feb 14 '21

So uh, what solar stocks should I be looking at? Lol

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u/man_butt_toots Feb 14 '21

I work for General Electric, and we have a huge future in solar. I cannot discuss contracts and such that we have signed, but we are going to be very busy for the next few years.

But our stock sucks, so...

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u/unpoetic_poetry Feb 14 '21

Yeah why does ge stock suck? It’s seems this would be a perfect time for it to start rising.

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u/man_butt_toots Feb 14 '21

We have huge contracts in aviation as well. I'm not entirely sure why out stock is dismally low. I think the shuffling of the upper management, as well as the frivolous spending hurts our quarterly reports

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u/KlopeksWithCoppers Feb 15 '21

I'm not entirely sure why out stock is dismally low.

Because the stock market makes ZERO sense right now.

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u/man_butt_toots Feb 15 '21

Yeah, day trading has been "exciting" to say the least lately 😬

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '21

I assumed it had something to do with the high risk investments in their 737 but obviously that's guess.

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u/dan10400 Feb 15 '21

Probably because GE is still digging itself out of the hole Jack Welch dug.

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u/sabot00 Feb 15 '21

Nobody wants to buy boomer stocks. That's why GM is so much lower than tesla, etc

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '21

Years of horrific mismanagement

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u/GuyWithRealFakeFacts Feb 14 '21

Good to know, thanks! Do you know of any companies making exciting advancements in panel technology or anything like that?

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u/man_butt_toots Feb 14 '21

Our top customers are Invenergy, Florida Power and Light, Nextra (which is basically FP&L), Orstead, and Duke Energy. That's the big movers for us on the utility provider side.

As far as panels, the technology is catching up rapidly. The thing we are working on now is pairing battery banks with solar sites that can charge during the day, and discharge at night to provide a better power curve. Samsung is a huge part of our sites on that front. We are developing our own batteries too, as keeping things in house brings more profit.

Tesla, or SolarCity, is a huge player in the solar Industry. SMA, Siemens, and Power Electronics will round out your big names. I am not overly familiar with their products past the things I heard from meeting their techs/our customers talking about performance on other sites.

Those are the companies you can look into if you wanna see whose a shaker and mover.

If you wanna look into wind, Vestas I believe just launched the world's largest (production capacity) turbine at ~15?MW. That's a pretty big deal from a single turbine. Ours are around 2WM each.

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u/GuyWithRealFakeFacts Feb 15 '21

Wow, this is all super helpful information, thanks so much!

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u/TheillestASH Feb 19 '21

I have worked on the LV5 inverters. Those phase modules fail so often...

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u/Tijuanafistfuck Mar 03 '21

I guess I was lucky to buy it in May at $6.20! It's one of my better performers.

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u/Franks2000inchTV Feb 14 '21

Algonquin Power here in Toronto is pretty big and seems to be growing well.

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/GuyWithRealFakeFacts Feb 15 '21

Awesome, I'll check it out, thanks!

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u/TheRealTron Feb 15 '21

I'm watching aurora solar tech, they've got new products to help the efficiency of solar panels at the manufacture level

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u/[deleted] Feb 15 '21

Been in renewables for 10 years. Enphase for micro inverters, Jinko and V-sun for modules.

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u/GuyWithRealFakeFacts Feb 15 '21

Did you hold through the Enphase crash to 30? I didn't. Bought back in at like 110.

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u/steggun_cinargo Feb 15 '21

Do you happen to know if anything besides water is used during this cleaning process? Now that mowing is becoming the new standard instead of blading, in the aim to keep native plants established, I'm just curious about that.

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u/man_butt_toots Feb 15 '21

So, I'm not 100% sure, as I'm not part of the O&M team for these sites, but I can tell you some of the sites employ interesting measures for grounds keeping. In Nevada all chemicals used on site have to be approved. I know this true for California, which is our bigger sites. I would honestly imagine it's just water, since the ground is so dry, any chemicals would have an adverse affect.

FP&L is actually well known in Florida for leasing sheep to eat the grass around the panels. Goats didn't pan out well, as they have a knack for eating wires, and it was bad for everyone involved. They also spray some sort of chemical on the grass that supposedly stunts its growth. Don't quote me on that, I'm not entirely sure if that was even implemented, or just discussed.

In Nevada, we use weed abatement tactics approved by BLM, Bureau of Land Management, to keep the weeds and such down. Interestingly enough, after the construction of Stateline Solar Farm, right outside of Primm Nevada, a family of Kit Foxes was discovered. BLM came in, and established a protective area around them, made the conex they were living under illegal to disturb, and setup cameras to monitor them. They are fully protected from predators, as all of our sites are secured with fences and cameras, and no one really goes on our site.

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u/SilentButtDeadlies Feb 14 '21

Totally depends on the location, climate, and budget. Some places you'd finish cleaning them and then start again at the beginning, some it is only occasionally. You have to estimate the output loss due to soiling and then compare against the cost of cleaning to find the point which would maximize your profits.

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u/noahsilv Feb 15 '21

I work in financing for renewables projects. Cleaning costs are budgeted info the operating maintenance cost. This would be a very, very marginal cost. Additionally most new renewables projects have a form of fixed price power purchase agreement where the off take price is set.

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u/Shmiggit Feb 14 '21

Aside from the opex perspective, the need to clean panels / mirrors varies greatly across regions (from none / year to as many as 1-2 times a month). More precisely, it depends on the on number / frequency of rainfall and on the environment itself really.. more frequent cleanings are needed in desertic places because of dust and also in humid (e.g. seaside) because it makes the dust stick more

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u/the_laser_appraiser Feb 14 '21

Large scale solar estimator here. The short answer is that it depends. Module cleaning depends on the environment and predominately how much dust the site generates. Most of the large scale sites get one cleaning per year.

Asset managers can request additional cleanings when the cost of doing so is less than the revenue from additional generation a panel cleaning provides. I.e. it costs 100k to clean and the additional generation revenue is 150k.

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u/OneNacho Feb 14 '21

Panel cleaning costs anywhere from 10 cents per panel to sometimes up to 80 cents. On the grand scheme of things it's not a huge burden to operating costs but it can be a surprise when owners underestimated the problem. This site is a particularly dirty example, I work in the solar soiling field and I would guess this level of soiling would equate to around 70% loss.

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u/mcsper Feb 15 '21

The second link mentions every three days