Operations, Maintenance and Training
The investment in a solar energy solution represents a sustainable and long lasting decision. To ensure a sound and consistently good and sustainable performance and to extend the life of a PV energy system, frequent maintenance checks and cleaning of the installation are necessary. meeco offers its customer operations and maintenance services through its experienced field-service engineers and local teams. They will actively supervise and monitor the condition and the performance of the specific clean energy system in order to maintain its economic value whilst minimising the risk of outages. The following factors, dependent upon the location and the weather conditions, can have an adverse effect on the production and could reduce the efficiency of the photovoltaic panels by more than 15%:
- Birds, which could build nests beneath the solar system and cause damage.
- Voles/Squirrels, which could damage the cables.
- Dust.
- Sand.
- Snow.
- Bird droppings.
- Oily stains (e.g. in the near of airports or under a flight path).
- Pollen (sticky and oily).
Thanks to the water-repellent effect (lotus effect) of the photovoltaic panels, a proper cleaning is often necessary only once or twice a year. The smooth surface of the solar panels is being cleaned regularly and automatically by the rain. However, in particularly dry areas or at places where the panels’ tilt is minimal, dust and dirt can deposit on the panels and influence the energy generation.
Easy cleaning of large-scale solar power plants
Our meeco team has developed a special solar panel cleaning and lawn mowing vehicle – sun2clean. This vehicle is perfectly suitable for medium- to large-scale solar energy plants and facilitates an easy and convenient cleaning and maintenance. With a length of five metres and a width of only 75 centimetres the vehicle can drive through even narrow passages between the solar modules.
sun2clean is equipped with a high-pressure cleaner and a 600 litres reverse osmosis canister offering the opportunity to clean water via the sun2water reverse osmosis process. The water, cleaned by the reverse osmosis, is demineralised and leaves, unlike rain, no debris on the surface of the panels. One fill of the canister is sufficient for one hour cleaning. Furthermore, sun2clean provides a separate component for lawn mowing and is therefore flexibly applicable.
