About Us - Shine Up Solar - Solar Panel Cleaning for Commercial & Residential

Shine Up Solar

Commercial, Utility & Residential Solar Panel Cleaning

Shine Up Solar was born in Roseville, CA in October 2010 and up to 2016 has cleaned over 10 Million solar panels and mowed over 5,000 acres. The founder Jimmy Hodges started selling solar residentially in 2009, and meticulously tracked his customers electric production via their monitoring systems.

He wanted to make sure the company he sold for was holding up their production guarantees. After a year of tracking he noticed some sites were performing anywhere from 5% to as much as 30% less than the same month year over year. He thought the cause may have been weather or malfunctioning equipment. He went out to speak with the customers to see if they had noticed the difference.

When arriving at their homes he noticed that the systems with the greatest decrease in production were the dirtiest! He had an idea to start cleaning their systems for free in exchange for 3 referrals for people they knew with over $300 electric bills. After a few weeks of cleaning solar and helping his customers increase their electrical production… a nice man gave him a $100 tip! From that day on this small evening and weekend business quickly grew to one of the largest, if not the largest, solar cleaning and vegetation maintenance companies in the country or even the world. We cover much of the South West United States and are not about to stop there. Shine Up Solar’s vision is to increase the world’s overall solar production efficiency. We aim to go international and expand to Australia in the next few years.

The first two years was spent cleaning residential solar with a few small commercial clients. Then after we cleaned IKEA in West Sacramento their focus shifted to commercial and utility scale. We still do residential cleanings, but our focus is on commercial and utility sites. We are now one of the largest full-scale solar panel cleaning and vegetation maintenance companies in the United States. Power production and energy efficiency are greatly improved on panels that have been serviced by Shine Up Solar.

We proudly provide cleaning and vegetation maintenance services to military, prisons, jails, airports, elementary schools, Jr High, High School, Junior Colleges and Universities. Our crews have top clearance and undergo extensive background checks to work on high security sites. We have grown organically and bootstrapped our operations from day one. We are growing every year and look forward to covering all the states that have solar and growing internationally in the coming years.

Shine Up Solar’s Technicians Undergo Comprehensive Training

Shine Up Solar’s cleaning technicians have undergone comprehensive training on the correct and safe methods to clean both residential and commercial solar arrays. Soiled modules have an adverse impact on the environment and our customer’s wallet. Solar panels decrease in energy production from dust, pollen, exhaust, bird droppings and all sorts of airborne pollutants. That means the customer loses out on savings and in turn more fossil fuels need to be burned to create the energy that is lost.

The average soiling rates over millions of arrays averages about 15% reduction in just one year with no cleaning. However, in a worst case scenario (dust storm after a heavy rain) we have seen decreased production of 50% or more in just one month. These are obviously the outliers such as the Piers down in San Francisco Bay which get blasted by sea gulls, and the Federal Border Patrol Headquarters in San Diego which gets hammered with dust and need to be cleaned monthly.

Most sites only need to be cleaned two times a year. In most cases the decrease in production averages about 10-30% between cleanings. The most significant soiling areas are near fields, construction sites, have bird problems, near a busy roads/freeways, or have a lot of sticky pollen from the trees in the area. You can see continuous annual decreases unless you clean your modules regularly.

Get in touch with one of our solar panel cleaning and maintenance experts today. Please reach out and experience top-level service from one of the largest solar panel cleaning companies in the nation.

We know there are more and more companies getting into the solar maintenance industry. We pride ourselves on being one of the first. Most of our business has come from word of mouth. We don’t spend money on traditional marketing. We get our business via referral. Most of our business comes from someone in the solar industry. They will ask someone else in the solar business,…

“Who does your pest prevention, weed clearing and module washing?”
The answer most of the time is,
“Shine Up Solar!”

To grow from a weekend business making extra money for Christmas presents, to being a multi-million dollar company, and spanning 7 states we must be doing something right. We greatly value our customers. We understand that it is much easier to keep a customer than find a new one. If we do a great job for someone they will typically tell 3 customers over the lifetime of our relationship. If we do a terrible job with that relationship a dissatisfied customer could tell 100 people.

Solar Panel Cleaning Service Area

Shine Up Solar will keep your system running smoother and improve your power output while being environmentally conscious at the same time. We currently service the following major cities, and we continue to expand our service territory each year:

Northern California