Yes we have been told that by our installers. Our gutter/roof people are usually quite amenable to doing a few extras (they cleaned our roof windows last time), so I think we will get the solar panels cleaned every time we do the gutters.
I am not sure what our payback time will be - the quote estimated about 9 years, but the exercise of installing solar panels, also led us to stop being lazy and do the rounds of the energy providers to get a better deal. We now have a 30% discount on electricity as well as 25% on gas and a 12.5c feed in tariff. It is going to mean a huge saving for us - many thousands, which I intend offsetting against the panels as we wouldn’t have done it otherwise.
We also plan to go through the exercise annually.....
