Solar Panel Maintenance
& Servicing
Keep your solar system performing at peak output. Professional maintenance, cleaning, and repairs across Yorkshire — all brands and installers welcome.
3–8%
Generation restored by professional cleaning
£150
Full inspection from (all included)
10–15yr
Average inverter lifespan before replacement
What's Included in Our Maintenance Service
Comprehensive care for every component of your solar installation — from panel surface to generation meter.
Annual Visual Inspection
Roof-level visual check of panels, mounting, and cabling. We identify micro-cracks, discolouration, panel damage, loose fixings, and water ingress points before they cause failures.
From £150
Electrical Safety Test
Full electrical testing of the array, inverter, isolation switches, and generation meter. Verifies all protective devices function correctly and that the system meets current BS 7671 standards.
Included with inspection
Inverter Health Check
Deep diagnostic of your inverter — error logs, voltage readings, efficiency analysis, and firmware update. Identifies early-stage faults before they cause complete shutdown.
Included with inspection
Professional Cleaning
Specialist soft-brush and purified-water cleaning removes bird droppings, lichen, moss, and dust deposits that block sunlight and degrade output. Typically restores 3–8% lost generation.
From £100
Bird Proofing
Robust aluminium mesh installed around the panel perimeter prevents pigeon nesting beneath your array. Nesting causes overheating, cable damage, and structural issues. Essential for urban installations.
From £250
Inverter Replacement
We replace end-of-life inverters with modern equivalents or upgrade to hybrid inverters compatible with battery storage. We handle all DNO paperwork and recommissioning.
From £600
Do Solar Panels Need Maintenance?
Solar panels are the lowest-maintenance electrical appliance in your home. They have no moving parts and self-clean in normal Yorkshire rainfall when installed at a pitch above 15 degrees. However, "low maintenance" does not mean "zero maintenance".
Annual visual checks catch rare but impactful issues: micro-cracks from hail or storm damage, bird nesting that causes hotspots, failing seals around roof penetrations, or loose DC cable connections that arc and degrade over time.
The inverter — the electronic heart of your system — requires more attention. After 10 years, error rates increase and efficiency drops. Proactive replacement avoids the frustration of discovering weeks of lost generation during a manual check.
For FiT-era systems installed before 2019, YEERS offers a dedicated legacy service. We assess the health of aging inverters, identify panels below performance thresholds, and advise on whether a targeted upgrade or full replacement offers the best ROI.
Signs Your System Is Healthy
- Generation within 10% of original estimate
- No inverter fault codes or alarms
- No visible damage to panels or frames
- Export payments arriving as expected
- Monitoring app shows daily generation curves
Warning Signs to Watch For
- Generation 15%+ below historic average
- Inverter fault light or error code showing
- Visible panel damage, discolouration, or cracking
- Bird activity or debris visible under panels
- System over 10 years old with no service history
Inverter Replacement — The 10-Year Milestone
String inverters carry a standard 10-year warranty and typically last 12–15 years in real-world conditions. If your system was installed between 2010 and 2015, you may be approaching this milestone.
Rather than a like-for-like replacement, YEERS recommends upgrading to a modern hybrid inverter. This enables battery storage to be added to your existing panel array without any changes to the roof-mounted components — often reducing the total retrofit cost by £1,000–£1,500 compared to a full system upgrade.
We handle all DNO notification, MCS re-registration, and SEG paperwork so your export payments continue uninterrupted.
£600
Standard inverter replacement from
+Battery
Upgrade to hybrid at same time
Brands We Service
All brands serviced regardless of original installer.
Monitoring Your System Between Services
All modern inverters provide real-time monitoring through a smartphone app. We set up your monitoring during installation and can troubleshoot remotely — often resolving issues without a site visit. If you've lost access to your monitoring, we can help restore it at any service visit.
GivEnergy
GivEnergy App
Real-time battery & solar
Fox ESS
Fox Cloud
Remote diagnosis & alerts
SolarEdge
mySolarEdge
Panel-level monitoring
Related Services
Solar Maintenance — FAQs
Advice on commercial savings, government grants, and renewable technology.
Do solar panels need regular maintenance?
How much does a solar panel service cost?
How do I know if my solar panels are underperforming?
When should I replace my inverter?
Can you service solar panels installed by other companies?
Start Your Project Today
Ready to reduce operational costs or improve your home's rating? Fill out the form for a free, no-obligation survey. We operate throughout Yorkshire.
Email Us
Visit HQ
Office 4, Blanket Row, Hull, HU1 1TB
What solar panel maintenance actually covers
An honest starting point: solar panels have no moving parts and degrade slowly. The majority of call-outs we attend across Hull, East Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Teesside are not failing panels at all — they are inverter faults, monitoring that quietly stopped reporting, or a DC isolator that tripped months ago and nobody noticed. A solar panel service is therefore mainly a fault-finding and electrical safety visit. Cleaning is the smallest part of it.
What a full service includes
- Visual inspection — panel glass, delamination, clamps, rail fixings, roof penetrations and weathering seals.
- Electrical inspection — AC and DC cabling, connector integrity, conduit UV damage, earthing and bonding.
- Inverter fault checks — stored fault codes, firmware status, cooling vents, and whether the fault is transient or recurring.
- String and DC testing — open-circuit voltage and short-circuit current per string, compared against expected values for the array and the conditions on the day.
- Isolator and RCD checks — DC isolator, AC isolator and consumer-unit protective device operation and correct labelling.
- Monitoring review — reconnecting dead monitoring and reading generation history to find when output actually changed.
- Bird-proofing and cleaning — mesh to the array perimeter where nesting has started, and cleaning only where soiling is genuinely affecting output.
Symptom → likely cause → what we check
| What you notice | Most likely cause | What we check first |
|---|---|---|
| Output dropped suddenly to zero | Tripped isolator, RCD or inverter shutdown | Isolators, protective devices, inverter status and stored fault codes |
| Inverter showing a fault code | Grid voltage excursion, insulation-resistance fault or over-temperature | Code history, DC insulation resistance, ventilation and cabling |
| Output down by a clear step, not a drift | One string or MPPT input offline | String-by-string voltage and current, connectors and MPPT inputs |
| Generation lower every year | Gradual soiling or shading growth — rarely the panels themselves | Soiling, new tree or building shading, historic monitoring data |
| Birds nesting under the panels | Open array perimeter | Nesting debris, cable damage from pecking, perimeter mesh |
| App or portal stopped reporting | Router change or lost inverter Wi-Fi credentials | Inverter comms, portal account, data continuity |
When a system genuinely needs attention
Book a visit if generation has fallen sharply rather than gradually, if the inverter is displaying a code, if monitoring has been dark for more than a month, if birds have got under the array, or if you are about to add battery storage installation and want the existing array and consumer unit verified first. Slow year-on-year decline is normal and is usually shading or soiling rather than panel failure.
What an MCS-certified installer checks that a window cleaner cannot
A cleaner can remove soiling. Testing and working on the DC and AC side should be done by a qualified electrician: insulation resistance, string performance, isolator and RCD function, earthing, and inverter diagnostics. That is also what tells you whether your export is still being metered — worth confirming, because Octopus Outgoing Fixed pays a flat 12p/kWh (since 1 March 2026) and time-of-use export tariffs can reach around 27p at peak, so a silently offline system costs real money. Any change to your grid connection, such as adding a battery, is notified to Northern Powergrid, the distribution network operator for this whole area. YEERS is Hull-based and MCS-certified, and our installation work carries a 10-year workmanship warranty. To book a solar panel service, tell us the make of your inverter and what the monitoring is showing.
Frequently asked questions
How often should solar panels be serviced?
There is no legal service interval for a domestic solar array. In practice, a full electrical inspection every few years is sensible, plus a check whenever generation drops sharply, the inverter displays a fault code, or the monitoring stops reporting. Most systems in Hull, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire are self-cleaning enough in normal rainfall that cleaning alone is rarely the reason to book.
Do solar panels really need cleaning?
Usually far less than people expect. UK rainfall clears most airborne dust from a pitched array. Cleaning is worth doing where there is bird fouling, lichen, moss washing down from a ridge, or a shallow pitch that holds dirt along the bottom edge of the glass. If output has dropped suddenly, cleaning is almost never the cause — look at the inverter and isolators first.
Why has my solar generation dropped but the panels look fine?
Because most losses are electrical, not physical. A tripped DC isolator, a failed string, an inverter shutting down on grid voltage or insulation-resistance faults, or a single MPPT input dropping out will all cut output while the array looks perfect from the ground. String voltage and current testing is what separates these causes; visual inspection alone will not.
Can a window cleaner or roofer service my solar system?
They can clean the glass and check the roof covering, but neither trade is qualified to test or work on the DC and AC electrical side. Insulation resistance testing, string measurements, isolator and RCD verification, earthing checks and inverter diagnostics need a qualified electrician. If a quote for a “solar service” does not mention electrical testing, it is a cleaning job.
Is it worth servicing an older system before adding a battery?
Yes. Adding storage means new work on the same consumer unit and, in many cases, on the inverter side, so any pre-existing fault, poor earthing or degraded DC cabling is better found first. It is also the point to confirm your export metering is working, since export payments only count what is actually recorded.
Last updated August 2026.
