The site and the test
Girasol R.E., the O&M company, looks after a 160 kWp solar plant in Israel where a heavy layer of cement dust had cured onto the modules. Chemitek’s photos show the modules on a roof, with industrial silos behind. Cleaning by hand with water alone had already failed: once cement dust cures, water and ordinary detergents barely touch it. Scrapers and high-pressure washing were ruled out, because they would damage the modules and void the warranty, and the modules in the middle of the strings were hard to reach.
- Remove: Chemitek Inorganic Removal Agent (CRA), diluted at the recommended ratio, sprayed onto the panels, brushed and rinsed with water.
- Protect: Chemitek Antistatic Solar Armor (ASA), diluted in clean water as its datasheet specifies, applied to 10 modules with a SolarCleano M1 cleaning robot.
- Control: uncoated modules from the same plant.
- Check: two weeks later, the O&M team compared how cement had re-attached to the coated and uncoated modules, and how well each cleaned. The report gives no dates.
Results
| Two weeks after the clean | Uncoated modules | Modules coated with ASA |
|---|---|---|
| Cement on the glass | Stuck to the glass again | Adhered less (O&M team) |
| When cleaned | Cement residue remained | Cleaned completely |
The O&M team reported what it had hoped to see: cement stuck less to the coated modules. Chemitek’s photos show one module of each, re-soiled, with a patch cleaned. On the uncoated module the cleaned patch is still speckled; on the coated module it came up much darker and clearer.
Girasol judged the test a success. It decided to clear the whole plant with Inorganic Removal Agent, then apply the antistatic coating regularly, so routine cleans wouldn’t need the remover every time.
How to read it
This is a qualitative test, and the report says so in its title. It ran for two weeks, gives no energy data, no dates and no count of uncoated modules, and doesn’t report the power output or time between cleans it set out to assess. The photos show one module from each group. Treat it as evidence that the coating kept cement from bonding again in the short term, not as a measure of the gain.
The report’s annex also repeats dust-chamber results from ÉMI-TÜV SÜD testing. The same table appears, labelled Solar Wash Protect, in Chemitek’s SWP case studies; Chemitek says ASA shares SWP’s antistatic chemistry without the detergent. They are laboratory figures for a sister product, not results from this plant, so we leave them out. This test also used the original ASA; Chemitek’s current coating is Antistatic Solar Armor 2.0, launched in 2025.
What this means for a South African plant
- Cement cures the same way here. Moisture dissolves part of the dust, which recrystallises into a bond that dry cleaning can’t break (IEA PVPS, 2022). Plants beside cement works, quarries, precast yards and building sites are exposed. Our North West pilot, on a ±15.6 MWp plant beside a cement works, met the same problem.
- Remove, then protect. One CRA clean doesn’t stop the next layer bonding. Coating straight after the restore is what kept the coated modules cleanable here, which is the logic of our Restore → Protect → Maintain programme.
- Match the coating to the crew. Here a robot applied the coating. Chemitek advises against applying ASA 2.0 by manual brush; crews that clean by hand use Solar Wash Protect, which Chemitek says leaves the same kind of antistatic layer. See how we treat cement dust.
- Measure what this test didn’t. Log energy on coated modules and matched uncoated ones, over months rather than weeks. Chemitek’s Chile carport case measured energy for the same two products over about six weeks.
Near a cement works or quarry? Our pilots test removal and coating on your own strings against matched controls, and are free for utility-scale and large C&I plants. If your crews already know the film, order just Inorganic Removal Agent and add Antistatic Solar Armor 2.0 to the programme.
