Picture credit: Octopus Energy

We recently switched to a renewable energy provider – Octopus energy and I’m so happy we did. I originally wrote about the switch here: This blog is now powered by Octopus Energy! Being green isn’t always easy, but switching to Octopus energy really is – it really only took me a few minutes to do. So if you are short on time and care about the environment, making the switch is a quick win.

Why did I want to switch to a renewable energy supplier?

I feel really passionate about renewable energy because I am very unhappy about the alternative energy options. We are running out of fossil fuels and we should no longer be using them anyway any more. We may even be too late to stop runaway climate change, but I think we have to try our hardest while we still can. Fracking is not the answer and nuclear is just too risky and too much of a long term problem. I believe that we need to move to sustainable and renewable sources of energy as soon as we can. The more people that invest in renewables, the quicker and faster we will march towards a sustainable energy future!

How has having renewable energy been going for us?

How can you switch to renewable energy too?

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Doing some research on solar panel cleaning there seems to be 2 opposing views (as always).

Disclaimer – an affiliate link was used in this post.

One view is that glass is ‘self-cleaning’. As rain water washes the panels regularly you might only be losing a few % of the yearly generation. They go onto say, if you do clean them, within a few days they will be dirty again anyway. The other side (mainly solar panel cleaning companies!) talk about losing between 5%-30% of the yearly generation from dirt. Even a thin film of grime on the panels reduces the amount of light which gets through to the panels. I saw one site comparing the solar panels to the windscreen in your car. You can’t go long without cleaning that and the rain doesn’t do much to clean it.  I’m not too convinced by that argument, but I do know what state our windows get in if left unwashed.

Is it worth it?

Well 5% of my yearly FIT payments (i.e. the money we get for the electricity we generate) is about £100. Although people getting solar panels more recently will be getting much less. The savings could still be more than £700 over the 20 years (at today’s prices). So even a small increase in efficiency will be worth looking into.

What’s involved?

All the solar cleaning websites I looked at talked about using ‘pure’ water instead of rainwater or tap water. Looking into this a bit more they say that pure water is H20. Whereas both rainwater and tap water have minerals, pollution, chlorine and all sorts of other things in it. If you have ever cleaned your windows with water and not wiped the water off afterwards what happens? It leaves streaks all down the window. Once the minerals are on the solar panels they attract more and that’s how they get so dirty. Cleaning with ‘pure’ water doesn’t leave any mineral deposits so they stay cleaner for longer (at least that’s the theory).

What are the options?

I asked a solar panel cleaning company to quote me to clean our panels. They wanted £75 for an annual clean or £120 for 2 cleans a year. One in spring and one in late summer. 

I found a few home solar panel cleaning kits with everything you need to clean your solar panels. They were £300+.

Looking at whats contained in the solar panel cleaning kit they are normally made up of the following:

• Solar panel friendly brush
• Extending pole to reach all the way up to the roof from the ground
• Water purifier and pump. The pump can take in rainwater or connect to an outside tap. It filters and removes all the minerals and gives out ‘pure’ water.

It makes a lot of sense for window or solar cleaning companies to invest in all this. But what are the options for the frugal solar panel homeowner?

Well there is another option, a DIY approach.

You have to buy a few bits but they come in useful for other jobs as well.

You need the following:  

1. An extendable pole (with water tube inside). Check how tall the top of the solar panels are. Buy the appropriate pole and a solar brush. Make sure the brush fits the end of the pole and has attachments for the water tube. (Around £115)
2. A Water Pump. *I bought a submersible pump. I can use it for this or to pump water from a water butt (around £60). 
3. Pure water. This is my best find so far. Instead of spending lots of money on a water filter go down to your local tropical fish shop. They can give you a barrel of 25L for less than £5.

With the above I had all the equipment I needed to clean my panels without climbing up onto the roof. It cost me around £180 for the lot, which was a significant saving on what I could have spent.

It was really quick to do. A few tips though;

1. Make sure all the power is off on the panels and inverters before cleaning the panels.
2. Do it in the evening after the sun has gone down. So the panels aren’t hot, but its still light enough to see.
3. Make sure you adjust the angle of the brush so its easy to clean.
4. Test the water through the brush before starting to clean the panels.

Have they made a difference?  Well I haven’t really noticed much difference yet, I have seen bird poo on it since though. I’ll keep a close look at it and will clean them every couple of months now I have the kit.

Should you get your panels cleaned professionally, do it yourself or not bother? I certainly wouldn’t pay £75 a year to get them cleaned over 20 years. I’ll hold judgment on the whether is is best to do the DIY version or leave alone.

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If you are buying this setup it will cost you £400 – £500 (see here) plus installation depending on if you get the remote monitoring which isn’t essential but nice to have. The heater cost us £20 so it would take a while to pay for itself. The Immersun allows you to put in your electricity costs and it will tell you how much in Kwh and £/$ have been saved but the real saving for me will be how much less gas we use and how warm the house feels on a cold spring or autumn day.  So watch this space for the next blog post to see how we get on with it as the trial progresses. For more information about the Immersun, take a look at their website here.

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Disclaimer – there are affilate links in this blog post.

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In our previous house we were on Economy 7 which gave us discounted energy over night so I was encouraging the missus to put on the washing and dishwasher overnight when it was cheaper, we dumped that though as it wasn’t cost effective as we used so much more energy in the day than we saved by having a cheaper tariff overnight.

Now we have the solar panels installed its all about when the sun is shining but its soo much more than that. Our system came with a monitor that told us how much energy was been generated at the minute (when you press the button on it), but it was out of context, yeh we are generating 1Kwh lets put the kettle on. That’s when I found the Eco eye , that shows us what we are consuming, generating and our net position both kilowatt hours and in a great traffic light system, red for drawing electricity from the grid, amber for using all we are generating and green for generating more then we are using.

With the eco-eye we can now see if we have spare electricity to use and how much we have used and generated each day, I can download the information and look at how much we are using over time but its all “offline” and in this day and age that just won’t do. So an evening or two of research on how to upload the data to the internet and I had the eco-eye connected to Xively, a site for “connected devices”.

Now I can see the current usage and generation on my phone or on my PC, can see when we have put the washing on at the right time or not. It does mean I can see when the misses has put the washing on when there is no sun or missed the ‘ideal’ time to put it on but I’m trying to give her the benefit of the doubt.

As part of the feed in tariff (FIT) the government assume we use half the energy we generate, from what I’ve seen and read people use much less than 50% unless they are making an effort. The more electricity we use when the sun is shining the more our electricity bill is reduced so it makes sense. What do you do to reduce energy usage and bills?

So as you can see my husband is rather obsessive umm I mean prudent when it comes to using electricity at the right time in our household and we keep our paid electricity usage as low as possible!

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The other way my husband is tracking me is via our central heating.  We are beta testing a new heating control called Tado.  We no longer have buttons in our home to turn our heating on, the control recognises whether we are in the house or not via an app on our smartphones.  The theory being that in the winter if the heating is on and we both leave the house the system will turn itself off rather than staying on at allotted times regardless of whether we are there or not.  What it does mean though is that my husband can see via the heating system when I have left the house…  Sometimes I think he should just put up CCTV cameras and be done with it

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[image: Lisa (Dr Clark) and research student Jamie examine a Microgen DB report]

How useful is this data? For some PV system owners it has already provided the means to challenge the installer over unexpectedly poor output, as the database makes it possible to prove what the expectation should be. For those debating whether to take the plunge and invest in a PV system, it offers firm evidence of the likely return on that investment. And for those who are merely interested in whether PV panels can actually work in the UK, it offers welcome reassurance. Over the first two years of the Microgen project, the team’s findings have been that 98% of solar PV systems do exactly what they say on the tin.

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