Solar system maintenance
How to maintain your solar and battery system including monitoring and cleaning.
Preventing faults
By maintaining your solar system you’re more likely to prevent faults, and ensure your system is operating efficiently and safely.
Hot spots and microcracks are the most common faults that can occur in your solar system.
Hot spots can occur when dirt and other substances like bird droppings accumulate on a panel, placing extra load on the cleaner parts of the panel. This can cause microcracks to form, compromising the system as a whole.
You can reduce the chances of hot spots and microcracks by regularly cleaning your solar panels of dirt and grime.
Solar panels only self-clean in the rain to a small extent. Stickier substances like bird and possum droppings or sap may harden over time and not wash off easily, even in heavy rain.
For safety reasons, we do not recommend you clean the panels yourself, either on the roof or from the ground. Cleaning, system health checks and maintenance work should be done by a solar professional accredited by the Clean Energy Council.
Shade caused by surrounding trees or other obstructions can impact solar generation. For this reason, we recommend any branches obstructing your solar panels are cut back by an arborist or landscaping professional.
Solar maintenance schedules
When having your solar installed, ask your accredited installer what state regulations apply to you when it comes to inspections and maintenance. Your installer should also provide you with a schedule of regular maintenance.
If you don't know when your last inspection was, we recommend organising an inspection of your system with a Clean Energy Council-accredited solar panel system installer.
Under the Renewable Energy Target, the Clean Energy Regulator can conduct random inspections of solar systems with small-scale technology certificates. If this happens to you, there’s no cost.
Monitoring your solar system
Beyond regular cleaning and technician health checks, monitoring your system can be a good way to check the health of your solar system and ensure its output is what you expect.
If you have a smart meter, you can check My Account or your AGL app for a feature called Solar Status. Solar Status is a service that monitors your solar system’s performance and helps identify potential issues that could decrease your energy generation and savings. Learn more about Solar Status.
For information on how to check your solar system’s status and performance in the AGL app, visit Using the AGL app.
