What do I need to clean solar panels?
What Type of Water Is Best for Cleaning Solar Panels?
Solar panel manufacturers often claim that rainwater is enough to keep them clean. However, that’s like saying rainwater is enough to keep your car clean. Rainwater is not enough to get rid of not only dirt, but other problems like bird droppings, dead bugs, pollen, and pollution. Plus, just like with window cleaning, rainwater and regular tap water can leave spots.5you will vary based on the size of the job you are doing and what equipment you already own. In a perfect setting, using only DI is the best approach because it gets the water cleaner, but DI resin gets expensive. However, since solar panels are not transparent like windows are, your total dissolved solids (TDS) can have a little higher parts per million (ppm). While we recommend 10 TDS for window cleaning, you can go up to 30 TDS for solar panels.
While reverse osmosis alone does not provide as pure of water as using RODI or DI only system, you can probably get by with only running through your RO system or solar panel cleaning. In a commercial application where you are cleaning thousands of solar panels, it's not easy to cost-effectively purify the volume of water needed. In this case, you may want to clean the panels using regular tap water, then switch to DI for rinsing only. We have plenty of customers who scrub panels with a washer, then rinse with DI water to help you conserve DI filter costs.
ProTool DIY RODI Solar Kit
For the serious cleaners who only do solar panels, we have designed a DIY RODI kit with extra RO water to help you clean solar panels faster.
- 4 - 40" filters for best filter life and water flow
- 4 12v pumps for RO boost and water delivery
- 3.5 GPM of RO production into tank
- 7.4 GPM at 60PSI of RO water delivered to the brush
- Pump controller for full control of water flow
- Wall mounts for easy installation
As explained in the video above, the dual RODI wall-mount kit produces enough RO water to feed a small pressure washer and power our best-selling rotary solar brush!
With this system, you can make RO water on demand and you don't have to worry about your water source or the TDS of your tap water.
You can clean hundreds of panels faster and they dry spotless!
Learn more about our complete 32" water-powered rotary brush kit!