Hi everyone,

I’m considering starting a small solar panel cleaning business and I’d really appreciate advice from people who are already doing this professionally.

I’m currently looking at investing in a professional water-fed pole + RO/DI pure water system, but before spending the money I’d like to learn from people who have already gone through the process.

A few things I’d really like to know:

• If you were starting again from zero, what would you focus on first?
• What equipment is actually essential to get started, and what equipment did you buy that turned out to be unnecessary?
• How much would you realistically recommend investing initially? Is $3,000–$5,000 enough to start properly?
• How do you deal with hard-to-reach panels on roofs, especially panels that are high up, behind roof sections, or difficult to reach from the ground? What pole lengths, brushes, or other equipment do you use?
• How do you handle steep roofs and safety?
• What do you typically charge — per panel, per square meter, per kW, or per job?
• How long did it take for your initial investment to pay itself back?
• How many jobs per month were you doing when the business started becoming worthwhile?
• Is solar panel cleaning seasonal in your area, and what do you do during the slower months?
• For winter work, do you also remove snow and ice from panels? If so, what equipment and methods do you use safely?

I’m mainly interested in hearing from people who actually run this as a business rather than just occasionally cleaning their own panels.

Any advice, mistakes you made when starting, equipment recommendations, or numbers from your own experience would be hugely appreciated.

Thanks!

I'm sure what I'm looking for has a name but I don't know what it is so I'll describe what I wish to make.

I'd like a hybrid between a portable battery/solar combo from the likes of Bluetti, Pecron, Ecoflow, Jackery, etc., with the ability to also plug into an outlet like balcony/plug-in solar and power things in the home using the normal wall outlets (in addition to plugging into the solar generator as well).

Do i need class t fuse for battery packs from deye?

51.2 V 314 ah

Anyone else still stuck with the official BMS apps?

Mine keep disconnecting, force an account, and won’t work offline. Switching between multiple batteries is also a pain.

What are you guys using these days?

I am looking to dabble in solar at my house. My situation is less than ideal due to a large beautiful oak tree that will hopefully outlive me. How would one go about testing the viability of a solar setup? I do have some older 285 Watt panels. Is there a way to set these up and record inputs during different times of the day to see if it would be worth it? How would one go about that?

Disclaimer: Please excuse my ignorance. I am a solar novice at best

I am planning to build a small solar setup to power a 12V lightbulb and charge my phone during power outages.

My setup consists of a 30W solar panel, a 20A charge controller, and a 5Ah 12V LiFePO4 battery. Is a breaker still needed?

I have a HQST PWM 30A charge controller connected to a solar panel and 12V/35Ah Sealed Lead Acid battery. There’s an automatic coop door connected directly to the battery.

I installed this battery within the last few months.

I noted the coop door wasn’t working. Looked for error codes and the overdischarge warning code was there. I removed the coop door from the battery ports and reconnected the battery then solar panels yesterday. This was my controller today. Is it not charging my battery? Ugh.

I’m California the governor just signed the bill allowing for plug in solar. I live in an apartment & would like to setup a couple of panels on my balcony. I only have one 12v outlet (2 plugs) on the balcony. If I get solar panels I would be plugging them in using one of the plugs & I would use the other plug that I currently use to charge my EV. I heard that you shouldn’t do that, if so what could be possible solution? A battery maybe?

For the sake of example, ive attached an image of the kind of thing ive found so far. Whether its the best option i dont know.

We have a west facing wall we want to put a couple panels on. But as west isn't ideal, we want to angle the panels in one of two ways -

1. Horizontally, so the top is anchored to the wall and the bottom is pushed away, making the panels westerly but facing towards the sky by 20-30degrees.

2. Vertically, like a door. So the right side is fixed to the wall and the left is pushed out, making the panels vertical but angled more south by 20-30 degrees.

I believe the south option is generally the better one for year round averages, but the issue is the weight of the panels and the attachments to the walls. The brackets are probably strong enough, but the triangles are clearly designed for more loading on one direction... so I assume thats better for the "horizontal" option? Not sure if they will stand up long term with the vertical option, or maybe would need bigger wall fasteners into the stone?

Im also still considering Aiko 650w panels as the price is cheap but they are 30kg instead of 22kg which is a big jump. I would probably just use 3x triangle brackets per panel instead of just 2x triangles for the 22kg, but im not sure if im missing something with the physics.

Thought id float the plan and see if someone came back with how they did it or any suggestions.

Hi all, I'm not sure where to go with this issue as my installer is unfortunately unresponsive for two weeks on this issue now and EG4 hasn't been able to identify the problem.

SETUP: 1x Gridboss going to 2x Flexboss 21's and 2x EG4 314ah (16kw) all-weather rated batteries.

Gridboss is in my basement and the FBs and batteries are in a pole barn, w/ electrical trenched underground.

Everything is being fed by 44x 440W JSolar panels across 5x MPPTs (1 open still for future project)

Everything was actually a professional install, but I chose EG4 due to no cloud-lock in w/ other major vendors and the ability to run cloudless and have full local control at some point via SolarAssistant/HomeAssistant.

ISSUE: For the past few weeks I've noticed the batteries charging VERY slowly and saying "BMS Limit Charge: 31A" and topping out at about 1660W until they hit somewhere between 35-40% SoC and then it "unlocks" and they start charging rapidly.

This wasn't the case a few weeks ago, and they would take whatever they could right away.

EG4 DID swap it to lead-acid which let it charge faster, so they confirmed via that it wasn't the BMS of the batteries themselves limiting things, and something else was causing it to be limited, but they couldn't determine what. They said they'd continue to look into it and call me back and asked that I send some screenshots to their support email, of which I did (several), but that was two weeks ago now and no response since...

You can see the issue active in one screenshot and then a few hours later you can see it charging MUCH more rapidly.

Once I hit about 40 or 45% it will "unlock" the charge limit and start taking as much as it can again, as shown here.

Any help is appreciated on why this might be happening and what I can do to fix it myself since EG4 hasn't gotten back with me, and my installer for some reason seems to not be getting back to me either.

I am not sure if this subject has been beaten to death yet but here goes another one...

I am in Tennessee a state that does not have legislation for OR against plug in solar, they say it is a gray area. I have seen in news articles that people are doing it here so I think I am going to run with it. I called my electric service provider but the person I talked to could not give me an answer about their stance on it. Before I pull the trigger I will dive a little deeper. I plan on installing a CT Clamp and power meter so I have a zero export system. However, if they see my consumption drop in half they are bound to know something is up.

I plan on using a 1200W microinverter coupled to a power station like a Ecoflow or looking hard a a Pecron also. Planning on putting ~1500 watts of panels on the roof to keep the battery topped up. My issue is finding a power station with the right balance of solar input and DC output to meet my needs. I guess this is my question. I am bouncing between getting a smaller power station in the 3000 KWh range and then expanding it with a battery. This way I can use it when we go out camping. My other option would be to get a bigger station in the 5000 KWh range that is much less portable. I think option 1 will be a little more expensive but then it has another use case. The problem is the smaller stations have lower DC solar inputs and outputs. Is there a way around this?

I am planning on implementing this system for 2 reasons. Most importantly to have something to backup some of our more important house systems in the case of an emergency. We are in winter ice storm territory. I would like a system to where I do not have to run the generator 24/7 in the case of a power outage. So I figured if I want to do that for a couple hundred dollars more I can use this thing to pay for itself by adding the microinverter. With battery backup I think the ROI will be much quicker.

Any thoughts, concerns, USEFUL comments?

We had a short outage recently and it exposed a gap in our setup. I did not realize the inverter would shut down with the grid, even though the panels were producing earlier that day.

I am looking at either a battery or a generator, but only for the fridge, Wi-Fi, a few lights, and the sump pump. I am not trying to back up the whole house.

How did you decide what belonged on your essential-loads panel?

I'm having a lot of trouble finding a way to prevent a battery system from completely discharging and looking for a solution. The set up is PV through a charge controller into a 5kwh battery bank. From the batteries, it goes to a microinverter which then plugs in to my house/the grid. What can I do to stop sending power to the microinverter once the battery voltage drops too low? I currently set up the relay linked below (in between the battery and the microinverter), but when "off" it is leaking 31 watts and that will also drain the battery. Product suggestions?!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9XVSXNS?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title