We’re having amazing weather in the Netherlands 🇳🇱 right now! Even though it’s technically spring, it feels like summer, with temperatures hitting 25 degrees Celsius already in early May 😎. This is super rare for us Dutchies, so we’re really making the most out of it by spending lots of time in our garden!
However, I have noticed that my solar panels on the roof are looking quite dirty. They are covered with a layer of green grime mixed with sand from the Sahara that was carried over by recent weather conditions. It’s time to clean them up!
Please note that my home has a water filtration and softener system installed. This means that the water that comes out of my tap is clean and demineralized. If you don’t have a similar system, I wouldn’t recommend using regular tap water for this purpose. Instead, you could consider collecting and using rainwater.
Online resources suggest that dirty solar panels can cause a 5-20% loss of energy production, but the exact percentage can vary depending on the source. It is difficult to determine the exact amount of energy loss in my case, as environmental conditions can change during the cleaning process. The sun’s intensity changes, clouds move, and the earth keeps spinning, making comparing power changes before and after cleaning challenging.
What I do know: They look nice and shiny again 🤩
../Frenck
Hello Franck
I thought I’ld visit the creator of Home Assistant and pass my thanks for the great work you’ve done!
I live in Switzerland, and before HA, I’ve used Indigo Domotics, a Mac based commercial product. I was happy with it for two years, then they switched to per year licensing…
I played around with FHEM, and through their Forum I became aware about Home Assistant.
That was about 2017… And since then HA is controlling my home and office.
The improvements and hard work you’ve put in this product is incredible!
Only thing I can complain about is the removal of Transient Variable Scenes in the Hue module, but else: Great Work!
HA is running dedicated on a Odroid N2+ with a zWave USB attached.
I’m active on the nethserver.org forum helping (& reducing load for devs…) by answering and assisting with networking issues, more info on me there. And I have three furry assistants helping me feel comfortable while coding, or testing my movement and camera integrations…
🙂
Best Regards from Switzerland
Andy