How to Protect Solar Panels from Bird Damage
Feb 16, 2023
Whether your solar panels are on a building, field, or floating in a body of water, they represent a significant investment to you.
To birds, however, they can look like a good place to perch or nest. Protecting your investment with effective preventive measures like lasers, can deter birds in the area from soiling the solar panels and creating a mess that can impact a panel’s effectiveness. The slightest shadow on a panel can lead to a significant drop in performance.
How Bird Droppings Impact Solar Panel Effectiveness
Bird droppings can have a drastic impact on the effectiveness of your solar panels. The uric acid in droppings can be extremely harmful to the photovoltaic modules in solar panels. This can cause issues such as hot spotting, in which solar cells act as if they are consuming energy instead of generating.
Etching is another issue, which is an outline of the dropping that can remain even after cleaning. Bird droppings must be removed quickly to prevent permanent damage, but cleaning constantly can become a costly endeavor.
Nesting Birds & Solar Panel Wiring
Another issue that can affect the performance of your solar panels is bird nesting under solar panels.
Birds as big as gulls can fit underneath the panels, and debris from nesting can accumulate between the panels and in the gutters, causing issues with the wiring.
Effective Bird Deterrence for Solar Panels
One effective solution for keeping birds away from solar panels is an automated laser. Birds do not see laser beams as humans do. They see the whole beam coming at them, which is much more of a visual threat than just a dot. It’s unsettling to most birds, getting them to leave almost immediately.
Automated lasers are completely programmable and tailored to your situation, ensuring that birds can not habituate to a single pattern and adapt to it. The laser is also clean, quiet, and can cover a large area. This means less cleaning of the solar panels and no obnoxious noise.
Bird Deterrent Solutions for Solar Panel Protection
At Wild Goose Chase, we have decades of experience in professional bird management solutions, with a wide array of options for bird exclusion, deterrence and nest management.
To learn more about our bird control solutions, including commercial, industrial and agricultural site assessment and services, reach out to the Wild Goose Chase team today.
0
