Sweet Answer from Solar Mango: (updated Jul 2015)
With rooftop solar growing at a fast pace worldwide, both for the residential and industrial/commercial sectors, a number of rooftop solar power plant owners are keen to learn how to maximise power output from their solar power plants.
You can do a number of things to ensure you get the best out of your rooftop solar panels.
They are as follows:
1. First, make sure you do not cut corners and buy high quality solar panels and inverters. This would be the most emphasised recommendation from Solar Mango. Paying slightly higher prices for good quality panels and inverters will serve you well over 25 long years.
2. Ensure that your system has a good monitoring system that shows you how well your solar panels are performing every day. Such monitoring will be useful if something has gone wrong with your system, especially if you are using a grid connected system.
3. If maximising output from your rooftop area is the key objective, it will be a good idea to go for higher efficiency panels as these generate more electricity per unit area than those panels that are of lower efficiency (Note however that high efficiency monocrystalline panels typically are costlier than the polycrystalline panels, and the cost per unit of electricity could be higher for the high efficiency panels)
4. Clean the panels frequently – at least once every month. At Solar Mango, we have observed that not cleaning the panels has been the single most reason for lower output from rooftop solar. In some installations, our teams has seen cakes of dust resting on the panels – making it obvious that they had not been cleaned for many months!
5) Make sure the panels are not shaded by trees, neighbourhood buildings, posts, mobile towers and such, as shading could affect the PV system adversely, sometimes even causing its complete shutdown.
6) Heat build-up can affect the efficiency of solar cells adversely. A solar panel mounting system should hence allow for spacing around the individual solar panels for air circulation.
Related Articles
- How much electricity does a rooftop solar PV system generate?
- Output of a solar PV power plant
- Solar Inverter – The Brain of a Solar Power Plant
- Solar Monitoring Systems – Keeping Track of Your Solar Farm, Round the Clock
- Inverter/PCU
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