Commercial Solar Panel Cleaning

Commercial solar panel cleaning for warehouse and factory roofs, office blocks, schools, farm buildings, carports and ground-mounted arrays across Northampton, Milton Keynes, Bedford and Buckingham. Purified water, soft brush, no detergent, nobody walking on your panels.

Soiling costs you generation, and your own data will tell you how much

Dust, pollen, diesel film, agricultural drift and bird fouling all sit between the sun and the cell. We are not going to quote you a percentage — the figures thrown around online are unsourced and they vary wildly by site, pitch and what is upwind of you.

You have something better. Your inverter logs generation. Note your output before the clean and after it, on comparable days, and you will have a number for your own array rather than somebody else's marketing. Add the reporting option and we will record the date and time of the clean so it lines up with your monitoring.

How the panels are cleaned

• Purified water only. Measured at 000 parts per million at the pole. No detergent, because detergent leaves a film and a film attracts the next layer of dust faster than bare glass does.
• Soft brush on a carbon pole, from the ground. Nobody stands on the array. Panels are not designed to be walked on, and microcracks in cells do not show up until your yield drops months later.
• Worked down the array, not across it, so dirty water never runs over glass that has already been cleaned.
• Frames and channels included. Silt builds in the lower frame edge and holds moisture against the seal.

Lichen, moss and bird fouling

Lichen takes hold on the frame edge and creeps onto the glass, and it will not come off with water. It is treated with a proprietary panel-safe remover, given dwell time, and rinsed — not scraped, because scraping is how anti-reflective coatings get ruined.

Bird fouling is acidic, it bakes on, and on a roof near trees or a landfill it is the main reason a commercial array underperforms. It is a heavier clean and it is priced as one.

Optional coatings

An antistatic treatment reduces how readily dry dust settles between cleans. A hydrophobic treatment sheds rain faster so the array self-cleans better through the winter. Both extend the interval between visits rather than replacing them. On a large array they are a significant cost, so take the numbers below and decide whether the maths works for your site.

What we do not do

No electrical work of any kind. We do not isolate, test, connect, disconnect or open anything. If your site requires the array to be isolated during cleaning, that is arranged by you or your O&M contractor before we arrive — tell us at booking and we will work to it.

No inverter servicing, no panel replacement, no repairs, no mounting or bracket work, no DNO or G99 matters, and no thermal or electroluminescence testing. If we see something that looks wrong — a scorched junction box, a cracked panel, a lifted bracket, standing water on a flat roof — we will photograph it and tell you, and then it is a job for your electrical contractor.

Cleaning is not a substitute for monitoring. If your yield is down and a clean does not recover it, the problem is electrical, not dirt.

Access and height

The price on this page covers arrays reachable from ground level, up to 15 metres, using carbon poles. That covers most single-storey industrial roofs, carports, ground mounts and farm buildings.

Where an array can only be reached by working platform or by going onto the roof, it is surveyed and quoted rather than priced online. Roof access on a live commercial building needs a permit, an anchor point survey and sometimes a man-safe system, and none of that can be guessed from a postcode.

When to clean

Twice a year on most commercial sites, timed for spring before the long generating months and autumn after leaf fall. Farm buildings, sites near arable land, and anything downwind of a quarry or a main road usually want more.

Where we work

Industrial and distribution roofs on Brackmills, Moulton Park, Round Spinney, Swan Valley and Pineham in Northampton. Kiln Farm, Blakelands, Tongwell and the Milton Keynes logistics parks. Elms Farm, Woburn Road, Marsh Leys and Priory Business Park in Bedford. Schools, farms, carports and ground mounts throughout Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire.

Fully insured. Environment Agency registered waste carrier, CBDL622625.