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Should you wash your solar panels?

https://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/should-you-wash-your-solar-panels.html
20•surprisetalk•51m ago

Comments

walrus01•16m ago
It's a bit worrying the author is asking chatgpt about the tingle rather than making sure there's a grounding lug on all the panels and they're all bonded to a grounding rod.

The rudimentary nature of the setup makes me think there isn't something like a single conductor 12awg (or euro equivalent) copper wire that bonds to all panels and a basic $30 rod.

1123581321•14m ago
Appreciate the attempts to quantify it. I haven't tried to quantify washing, but I do look at mine regularly. I doubt anything accumulates that rain doesn't handle well enough.

Messing around with ground panels is lower risk and safer than roof panels where tool extenders and ladders start to become involved. If you have roof panels, you are the biggest danger to your panels (and yourself.) Don't try to clean them, spray them, knock snow off of them. I was told this multiple times by my installer. :)

collabs•12m ago
Maybe the thing to do is to NOT upgrade existing working panels but rather set up a different/separate entity with completely different accounts and new panels?

And about the washing, I wonder if it would be worth it to automate the process with a spray of water periodically? You can still wash the panels but I suspect it won't be necessary if there isn't too much dust accumulation? Isn't rain supposed to wash away the dust? What am I missing here?

ido•7m ago
Some places don't get much rain (and these are the places that tend to get even more dust - e.g. deserts).
bebe8393jrir•11m ago
> If I increase the power output of the system then the additional capacity will not be eligible for the feed-in tariff and will revert to present-day prevailing tariff which is about 4x worse before you even consider that I currently get to use electricity and still get paid for generating it.

> This is the yin and yang of market-distorting incentives. Today's incentive to install solar becomes tomorrow's disincentive to upgrading it.

I am not sure what author is trying to hint. But solar does not need artificial subsidies, and can pay for itself!

wodenokoto•9m ago
> why would you clean them when you're about to sell the house?

So they look good and the potential buyer sees something that looks to be in good condition and working well.

Stable Scheduling Increases Productivity and Sales (2016) [pdf]

https://worklifelaw.org/publications/Stable-Scheduling-Study-Report.pdf
1•mooreds•30s ago•0 comments

Erasmus Darwin's Improved Design for Steering Carriages–and Cars (2002)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/532121
1•walterbell•1m ago•0 comments

The Beauty of Chalk

https://www.plough.com/articles/the-beauty-of-chalk
1•geneticdrifts•1m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Xllama – Local LLM Chat and Stable Diffusion on an Xbox Series S

https://github.com/gianlucamazza/xllama
1•gmazza1989•2m ago•0 comments

How the EU can punish Google (despite Trump)

https://pluralistic.net/2026/07/27/eucd-6/
1•hn_acker•4m ago•0 comments

Iran War Forces Energy Buyers to 'Unshackle' from Global Markets

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/business/natural-gas-lng-asia-exposure.html
1•JumpCrisscross•5m ago•0 comments

AI Can't Do the Last 20%

https://www.vincentschmalbach.com/ai-cant-do-last-20/
3•vincent_s•6m ago•0 comments

Why Fast Branching Is Key to AI Agent-Era Databases

https://medium.com/@Koukyosyumei/why-fast-branching-is-key-to-ai-agent-era-databases-6249a129a802
1•syumei•8m ago•0 comments

Steganographic Language Output Process Encoding

https://cryptography.dog/blog/steganographic-language-output-process-encoding/
1•ColinWright•9m ago•0 comments

The reconnect storm that never touched the broker

https://www.sidexlabs.com/posts/reconnect-storm
1•thechuckgroup•10m ago•0 comments

Build a whole marketing team with eve

https://github.com/vercel-labs/marketing-team-eve-template
1•flashbrew•12m ago•0 comments

You, too, can never, ever relax

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/04/you-too-can-never-ever-relax/
2•surprisetalk•15m ago•0 comments

AI doesn't get better at this board game with practice

https://epoch.ai/publications/earthborne-rangers-benchmark
1•speckx•16m ago•0 comments

Avoid the Trap of Magical Thinking

https://bjorg.bjornroche.com/management/magical-thinking/
2•mooreds•16m ago•0 comments

How to answer ethical concerns about AI

https://www.theaithinker.com/p/how-to-answer-ethical-concerns-about
1•adamfaik•18m ago•0 comments

How al-Qaida and IS are adopting AI

https://theconversation.com/al-qaida-and-the-islamic-state-are-both-adopting-ai-but-differ-in-how...
3•teaman2000•18m ago•0 comments

Iarpa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_Advanced_Research_Projects_Activity
1•gregsadetsky•19m ago•0 comments

AI as Normal Technology

https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology
2•ETH_start•19m ago•0 comments

Surprising Portion of Rent-Stabilized Apartments Go to NYC's Wealthiest Renters

https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/a-surprising-portion-of-rent-stabilized-apartments-go-to-nycs-wea...
4•JumpCrisscross•20m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Read the Places – a map of every real place in 392 novels

https://readtheplaces.com/
2•markselby•23m ago•1 comments

Stirring Up the Colonial Past

https://oxonianreview.com/articles/stirring-up-the-colonial-past
2•speckx•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: How many more times will you see your mother?

https://countyourtimes.com
1•alexjray•24m ago•0 comments

Being a Luddite Is Fun Again

https://www.404media.co/luddite-events-nyc-off-tech-summer-of-ludd/
1•cdrnsf•25m ago•0 comments

Four Agent Frameworks in Sixteen Months

https://engineering.vasco.app/articles/four-agent-frameworks/
2•scastiel•25m ago•0 comments

We Tested Nonstick Cookware: Coatings Don't Need to Look Worn to Shed Particles

https://www.rtings.com/air-fryer/learn/research/ptfe-cookware-shedding
1•cdemer•26m ago•1 comments

Pigeongram

https://www.pigeongram.com/
2•austinallegro•30m ago•0 comments

Show HN: QuickMark – Markdown app for macOS with a Quick Look preview extension

https://quickmarkmd.com/
1•nguyendinhdoan•31m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Arcade.js – Decompiling MAME ROMs into Idiomatic JavaScript with LLMs

https://github.com/qarl/arcade-js
1•qarl2•32m ago•0 comments

Canada remains anti-nuke, but its potential path to the bomb is getting shorter

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-remains-antinuke-road-to-bomb-getting-shorter-9.7283194
3•throw0101d•33m ago•0 comments

The Royal Order of Operations

https://ken.fyi/ooo
1•surprisetalk•34m ago•0 comments