​Your solar battery system needs to stay clean for peak efficiency. Performance issues and early wear can happen due to dust, debris and insects making their home in the system. You should clean external components with the right methods to stop heat from building up and damaging internal parts.

Your system needs professional checking every three years by certified installers. They will:
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- Run detailed system checks
​- Test electrical components
- Look at cables and isolators
- Review fault history
​- Check performance levels

Professional maintenance costs pay off because experts catch problems early before they hurt your system’s performance. These technicians make sure your battery management system stays up to date, which helps optimise charging cycles.
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Remember to follow your manufacturer’s guidelines for maintenance. Different battery types like lithium-ion and lead-acid need different care. Good maintenance not only makes your battery last longer but also keeps your power supply reliable for years.

Well we thought running out of toilet paper was the hot topic in an extreme event, but it seems deciding to turn your Solar PV system off or leave it on has taken the prize.

There have been concerns circulating about whether to turn off your solar PV system, which has understandably worried some people. However, it’s important to clarify how solar inverters work during power outages caused by storms or cyclones.

Solar inverters are designed to shut down automatically when there is a power loss. This prevents electricity from being fed into the grid, which could be dangerous if power lines are damaged. When power is restored, solar inverters will automatically turn on after going through a start up process, checking parameters such as grid voltage, solar output and safety protocols amongst many other parameters. Whether your inverter has automatically turned off or you have physically turned it off, the solar panel array, although not producing energy, is never safe to be interacting with if you are not a solar electrician.

The advice to turn your Solar PV off could be a cautious approach to allow less solar on the grid at times of grid instability.

In most cases, you do not need to turn off your system manually unless you suspect damage to your solar array cables or inverter, or if there is a risk of flooding. Solar inverters typically detect issues with the system and display a fault warning, often indicated by a red or amber light. If this happens, it’s a good idea to turn off your inverter and have it inspected by a solar electrician.

If damage has occurred that has compromised the Solar PV system, generally inverters won't start up and you'll see a red or amber light on the inverter or a fault code on the inverter screen. If you saw this and it was safe to do so, you would follow the shutdown procedure label on the inverter and turn it off.
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Another common characteristic, which is helpful to know, is that if you have sustained damage to solar DC cables and there is moisture present, it generally causes a fault alert on your inverter. This is common for those who have experienced a possum chewing through the insulation of a solar DC cable and it alerts a fault whenever it rains or after morning heavy dew.

We are naturally going to be experiencing a lot of wind and rain over the next few days and if you've chosen to turn your system off, you'll then be deciding when to turn it back on and if it is safe to do so. As with any electrical appliance, you'll first visually look over your system where possible to see if anything is damaged. By turning on your system and observing when it's wet and not producing much power, your inverter generally may detect a fault if your cabling has been damaged. Again, if this is the case you would follow the shutdown procedure label on the inverter and turn it off and have it inspected by a solar electrician.

Based on hail storm experience, solar panels can shatter from impact, but still produce power and inverters may not detect this. Shattered panels visually look a little different compared to others on your roof and although still producing energy, should be replaced or isolated when able to.
If you decide to turn off your system, follow the shutdown procedure labeled on your inverter:

1. First, turn off the Inverter AC Solar Main Switch, usually located in your switchboard.
2. Then, turn off the DC switch, which is located on or near the inverter.

If your solar inverter is at risk of flooding, it is strongly advisable to turn it off, just as you would with any other electrical device.
After the storm has passed, if there is no visible damage to your rooftop array, cabling, or inverter, you can turn the system back on in reverse order:
Turn on the Solar DC switch.
Turn on the Solar AC Main Switch.

When restarting your system, check that the inverter is powered on and that no fault lights are displayed. While inverter designs vary, a green light generally indicates normal operation, whereas a red or amber light signals a fault that requires professional inspection by a solar electrician.

Additionally, if your solar monitoring app shows your system as offline, it does not necessarily mean it is off. Many modern systems are connected to the internet via Wi-Fi or other methods, and an offline status could simply indicate a Wi-Fi connection issue. To confirm that your solar inverter is operating, always check the physical inverter itself.

Stay safe and take care.
from the Local Power team

Road trip complete!
After 14 days of driving and visiting people and places, we've finished our 8372km EV road trip.  It included driving from the Gold Coast to Cairns and back to the Gold Coast, and then Brisbane to Melbourne (via Sydney) and back to Brisbane.  We made a series of short YouTube videos documenting the experience and where we also discussed EV charging, batteries, renewable energy and a whole lot more.

Charging
For more than half the time over the entire journey, we used 50kW Tritium (brisbane built) chargers provided by the Qld state government (QESH) and the NRMA.  These take around 40-50 minutes to charge up, adding 200km+, and be ready for the next leg of the journey.  For most of the Brisbane to Melbourne and back leg we used the Tesla superchargers (100kW) which were twice as fast meaning our stops to charge were under half an hour.

"Fuel" Cost
We used around 1223kWh of energy to travel that distance which is less than the energy a 1kW solar PV system would generate in a year in Qld.  If payment for charging was enabled (& if the cost 44c/kWh on all the chargers) it would have cost us $538.12 to travel the 8372km.  As it turns out, we paid just $7.86 in "fuel" for the entire journey when we used a third party Chargefox charging network once for a quick topup.  Our usage of the Tesla superchargers was free (we used a referal code like this one which gave us 1500 km of free supercharing when we bought the car.  Feel free to use this code if you end up orderging a Tesla and at the moment we both get 1500 km of free supercharging.)

8372km is around half the total distance that most people drive in a whole year.  Charging more slowly at normal residential electricity prices (22c/kWh), and traveling that same distance, would cost $269.06.  Charging from a home Solar PV system, versus selling that surplus electricity to the grid would cost $97.84, depending of course on your Solar PV feed in tariff.  Imagine spending $200-$600 for fuel for an entire year!

Video blog
Join us for the trip by watching our videos linked here:

• The whole trip or watch the individual legs below
• Gold Coast to Cairns
• Cairns to Gold Coast
• Brisbane to Melbourne
• Melbourne to Brisbane

Click on the table to see the full spreadsheet of stats.  Click on the maps to open in google maps.  We also picked up quite a few bugs on the road trip!