Cleaning up so we get more power!

We had not gotten around to cleaning our solar panels while we were in Mesa, and since we aren't hooked up to electricity here in Kaibab National Forest, we decided we'd better get the solar panels as clean as we could so we'd be able to generate as much electricity as possible.

A "before" picture so I could see if they got better with cleaning...

Carl took a few pictures while I was cleaning...

... the pictures also give you a view of our campsite...

... in these pictures you do not see any other RVs, but we do have neighbors. They have parked closer than we would have anticipated that they would, but... it is up to each camper to decide where they want to park!

                             Before ....                                               ... and after... I think it should help!

Here's a screen capture from the solar controller monitoring tool:

The red jaggedy line is the solar power -- you can see on the left side that it was increasing with a pretty much straight line (the one small dip may have been a cloud). Then a bunch of dips happened while I was cleaning (I shadowed the panels and interrupted the sun providing power). But then you can see the line straightening out again, but at a higher power generation amount than if the earlier line had continued on its trajectory. We figured that the cleaning improved the power generation by about 10%.

We appreciate getting "free" power from the sun ("free" if you don't consider the cost of the solar panels, controller, wiring, etc.!).