Ho Hum, Solar....one of the best & worst things ever :-)
OK, so you save a bunch of $$$ by going solar, that's cool, and yes, you will need to clean them, but dont gripe about it as your getting FREE electricity, you gotta be prepared to do 'some' maintenance.
No panels will last forever, they do degrade, in fact "10 years" is somewhat generous for most brands, they die off in 5yrs in many cases, although adding additional panels can offer a pseudo-rejuvination.
New technologies are always evolving with Solar, but it will cost a small fortune for the next revision panels, you can grab those, but then you lose all your savings with your current system.
Beware of cheap deals on panels, theyre simply getting rid of their crap stock ready to re-import the next wave of (better?) panels.
It might seem attractive to remain connected on the grid and get paid for your unused power, but being on the grid means your system is ALWAYS under load speeding up the time it takes to die.
If you have a decent battery/charge system, you wont need sunny days everyday, in fact 1 sunny day of charging can power your house for a WEEK without needing a recharge, but if youre connected on the grid it'll be gone overnight.
Rememebr, you're "unused power" is stored in the batteries and will be there the next day to ofer you FREE electricity, why lose it on the grid, and get paid measly few $$ for it?
Time to turn off the greed switch and just be happy to get FREE power.....get off the grid and they cant touch you.
Additionally, there's a growing trend to now not use invertors for 240V systems, a new growth of low voltage 12-24v DC systems are excelling in performance and safe enough for home-users to D.I.Y installs, no electrical license required.
Also to note, the rise & rise of power (for non-solar people) is based on the great losses the power companies are suffering with everyone moving onto solar, and even worse when they also pay people for their unused energy.
Be aware that you 'non solar' people are basically paying the bills of people no longer on the grid...the electricity companies dont wanna lose, so YOU pay for it.
Hopefully everyone will get on solar ASAP, and the elctrical company can just close it's doors, nobody wil need it...they had it too good for too long. ;-)
Additionally, i'd been involved with a private installation a few years back in rural vic (no power lines).
We developed a system using double the typical range of panels, twin invertors for redundancy and 4 battery banks for energy storage.
1 sunny day can run that building for almost 1 month without a glitch...
I'm now working on some projects on the side so that we can aim at providing an energy system that only needs sunny days a few times per YEAR to keep things boosted, although there's additioanl contraptions added to the mix.
FREE energy (or very close to it) is the ultimate way!
MM
