Portfolio
See the difference professional solar panel cleaning makes for homeowners and businesses across Southern Wisconsin.
| Customer | Location | Panels | Result | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Waunakee Residence | Waunakee, WI | Residential array | Mirror-clean · reflection restored | Sept 2026 |
| Rural Ridge Array | Southern WI countryside | Residential array | Farm-dust & pollen restore | Summer 2025 |
| First Commercial Property | Southern WI | Ballasted flat-roof array | Finger-test proof · full restore | Summer 2025 |
| Discoloration Diagnosis | Southern WI | Residential array | Identified EVA yellowing (warranty) | Summer 2025 |
| 8-Year Neglect | Southern WI | Residential array | 8 yrs of compounded grime, cleared | Summer 2025 |
| WI State Capitol | Madison, WI | Commercial array | +16.7% irradiance | May 2026 |
| AF | Madison, WI | ~20 | +22% production | May 2025 |
| Marquis’s own panels (founder’s home array) | Madison, WI | ~24 | +15.2 kWh / day (+22%) | May 8, 2025 |
| Skeptical Homeowner | Southern WI | ~20 | Same-day app jump | Spring 2025 |
| Farm-adjacent | Baraboo, WI | Residential | Mirror-clean post-storm | Summer 2025 |
Results vary by system, weather, and accumulated soiling. See full Results Disclaimer.
Real Results By The Numbers
+16.7%
Sunlight reaching the glass
Wisconsin State Capitol
+22%
My own home array, the day
this company started
5–15%
Annual soiling losses
NREL humid U.S. climates
Production gains vary by system, weather, and soiling. See full Results Disclaimer · Research & Sources.
On May 14, 2026, I cleaned the Wisconsin State Capitol's solar panels.
Installed in 2009. Never cleaned. 17 years of pollen, dust, hard-water deposits, and bird debris, gone in one visit. I did the State Capitol's rooftop array — your property gets the same care.
Wisconsin State Capitol rooftop, solar array post-cleaning, May 2026
Same panel, same spot, 30 minutes apart
I measured solar irradiance at the same spot on the same panel, before and after cleaning. The dirt was blocking light from reaching the cells, that's lost production, every sunny day, for 17 years.
Before
799.7
W/m²
After
933.9
W/m²
+16.7%
more light reaching the panels
+134.2 W/m² recovered at the measurement point
“If Wisconsin's most iconic rooftop needed cleaning after 17 years, the panels on your house probably do too.”
Marquis Mason, Solar Alchemist
Irradiance readings reflect a single measurement point on this specific array. Recovered production varies by system, weather, and soiling conditions. See full Results Disclaimer.
Metal roof, morning film, gone before the coffee cooled.
Southern Wisconsin residential array on a standing-seam metal roof. The 8:32 AM shot shows the hazy film every rooftop panel picks up between rains. By 9:22 AM the glass is dark and uniform again, the way it left the factory.
Same roof, same panels, 50 minutes apart. DI water first. Manufacturer-matched surfactant only when needed. Zero foot traffic on the glass.
Rain washes off dust.
It doesn’t wash off this.
Same panels the homeowner drove past every day, losing a few percent to a film they couldn’t see. Every leaf on every tree across the street now reflected cleanly in the glass, 22 minutes later.
If your panels can’t mirror the trees across the street, they aren’t producing what they were built to.
When the glass turns back into a mirror.
Two Southern Wisconsin homeowners, two different rooftops, one shaded by a mature ash tree, one on a wide-open front-facing pitch above the driveway. Both were coated in the kind of film rain alone won't lift. The “after” test I always use: can you see the surroundings reflected clearly in the glass? If yes, they're producing again.
Rooftop array · Ash-tree pollen load
Ash-tree pollen bakes into a film every August, rain can’t rinse it. Now it reflects the whole canopy.
Front-pitch rooftop · Dust + hard-water striations
Ambient dust plus Dane County’s ~20 grains-per-gallon hard water leaves mineral striations. Deionized rinse clears them completely.
Both residential jobs used the same method: manufacturer-matched contact tooling, pole-fed 100% deionized water, and a manufacturer-matched surfactant only when the buildup called for it. Zero pressure washing, zero foot traffic on the glass.
The one that started it all, a flat-roof commercial array,
and a fingertip that told the truth.
A ballasted, flat-roof array on a small Southern Wisconsin business, the kind of installation most cleaning services pass on because ballast blocks and gravel make ground access awkward. This one didn't get skipped. And the proof came home on a fingertip.
One swipe. That's all it took. Every fingertip came back coated in a fine grey-black film, the kind of buildup that reduces output on clear days without ever showing from the ground.
Why this job mattered
Ballasted flat-roof commercial arrays are the ones nobody wants to touch.
Ballast blocks and gravel make ground access awkward. Frames sit low. There's nowhere to tie off. Most solar-cleaning outfits will happily bid on a residential shingle roof and pass on a job like this. This one got the manufacturer-matched treatment instead. Pole-fed 100% deionized water and soft brushes chosen from the panel manufacturer's manual, with a brand-matched surfactant only where the manufacturer allowed it, and zero foot traffic on the glass.
The array sits on a small commercial building in a mixed-use Southern Wisconsin block, homes across the street, a video store next door, restaurants nearby. Not a marquee-name Fortune-500 rooftop. Just the kind of local, hard-working business that most people don't realize even has solar, and exactly the customer Solar Alchemist was built to serve.
The edge closer up, look at the fine mineral haze along the bottom rail. Rain builds this, rain doesn't remove it.
After the clean
Every row. Every panel. Sky-mirror clean.
“When I finished that job and looked at my hand, I remember thinking, there's no way this array had ever been cleaned. Not once. That grey-black on my fingers was months, maybe years of production this owner had been leaving on the roof.”
That's the moment Solar Alchemist stopped being a residential-only side hustle and became a commercial operation. Every ballasted rooftop, every warehouse, every ag facility I've serviced since started with the confidence I earned on this one.
Marquis Mason · Owner, Solar Alchemist · Southern WI
Countryside home, panels running the ridge, cornfields for a neighbor.
Rural roofs catch a completely different kind of soiling, farm dust in spring, wind-blown pollen from surrounding acreage, and the fine grit lifted off gravel roads by every passing truck. Rain doesn't clear it; it packs it in. Here's what a residential array looks like when it's finally treated to a manufacturer-matched clean.
What you're seeing: a residential array most homeowners assume is “fine” because it looks OK from the driveway. Look closer at the second shot. Trees are visibly reflected in the glass. That reflection is the tell that every cell is finally receiving unblocked light.
The Mirror Test.
From the ground, the “before” panel looks fine. Up close it's coated in a fine film that rain doesn't lift, and it takes a percent or two off production all season.
Look at the right panel, you can see the trees reflected in the glass. That's a clean panel.
Most homeowners can't tell their panels are dirty, because from the driveway, dirty panels still look dark. The trick I tell folks: look for reflections.
A truly clean panel mirrors the sky like glass. You should be able to make out trees, clouds, even the silhouette of a passing bird. If yours look matte, hazy, or chalky, that's a microscopic film of pollen, pollutants, and mineral residue that rain alone cannot lift.
That film scatters incoming sunlight before it ever reaches the cell. The fix isn't pressure or scrubbing, it's 100% deionized water and the right protocol, applied once or twice a year. The reflection is the proof.
Marquis Mason
Owner · Solar Alchemist
Every year you don't clean is a payment you're making, to no one.
Look at the ‘after.’ The clouds are now visible in the glass. That's how much light was blocked before.
This array had never been touched since the day it was installed. Eight straight summers of pollen. Eight autumns of leaf-fall. Eight winters of road-salt drift. Eight springs of hard-water residue. All of it rain-baked into a film thicker than most homeowners will ever see.
The “before” isn't dust. It's sediment. Every rainstorm that hit this roof for the last decade added a microscopic layer, and rain is what packed it in, not what took it off.
Look at the “after.” Every cloud in the sky is reflected in the glass. That's not showmanship, it's the light finally reaching the cells for the first time in over a decade.
The bottom line: You can measure lost production in kilowatt-hours. You can also measure it in years of silent, compounding loss, every one of them recoverable in a single afternoon.
Marquis Mason
Eight-year backlog cleared in one visit · Solar Alchemist
Not all discoloration is dirt.
Sometimes a panel that looked hopelessly stained lifts back to factory-finish black with one pass. Other times, I scrub, I deionize, I go over it twice, and the mottling stays. That's not my brushes giving up. That's the panel itself telling me something. Here's what I've learned to spot in the field, and what I'll always tell you honestly.
The top row came back to factory black.
The bottom row didn't.
Look at the two rows in this photo. They got identical treatment on the same afternoon, same manufacturer-matched contact tooling, same 100% deionized water, same pressure. The top two panels lifted back to a rich, uniform, showroom-black finish. The bottom panel came out visibly lighter, streaked, mottled.
This is the tell-tale sign for what solar techs call EVA yellowing, the encapsulant layer between the glass and the silicon cells has degraded from years of UV. It's the plastic that's browning, not the glass. No brush on Earth reaches that layer.
Sometimes cleaning makes a panel look worse. Here's why.
Same roof. Same afternoon. What you're looking at is a homeowner's first honest snapshot of their array in years. The dust wasn't just costing them production, it was hiding a warranty issue.
Before I started, the whole array looked uniformly dark because pollen and mineral haze coated everything. Once I cleaned, the healthy panels lifted back to deep black, and a handful of panels revealed themselves as amber, patchy, and clearly failing. That yellowing has been progressing invisibly under the dust for years. It's a manufacturing defect / EVA degradation issue, not a cleaning issue. It's a warranty claim.
My promise on every job
I'll tell you exactly which panels are cleanable, and which ones need a warranty conversation with your installer.
No pressure, no upsell, no pretending I can scrub away something that's failing inside the panel. That kind of honesty is why my customers refer me. I'd rather lose the sale on one panel and earn the trust for the next fifteen years.
Marquis Mason · Owner, Solar Alchemist
“Wasn't sure I needed it, glad I made the call.”
This customer wasn't convinced a cleaning was necessary. After I finished the job, both of us were glad the call was made.
Same array, same angle, before vs. after
This customer wasn't sure he needed a cleaning. After I finished, we were both glad the call was made. The panels went from dull and hazy to crystal clear, and his app showed the production jump within hours.
Trust isn't given, it's earned. Every honest “you probably need it” call turns into a customer for life.
Solar Alchemist · Locally owned, $2M insured, OSHA-trained
Mother Nature does her best.
I do the rest.
Same Baraboo array, same evening, rain alone, then one professional visit.
Rain is a rinse, not a cleaning. On panels coated with field dust, crop pollen, and minerals from hard well water, rainfall mostly redistributes the grime, leaving streaks, water spots, and a haze that flat-out blocks light.
What nature leaves behind, my pole-fed deionized-water rig and soft rotary brush matched to your panel manufacturer remove, roof-safe, and warranty-friendly.
Marquis Mason
Solar Alchemist · Baraboo, WI
Pollen, evicted.
Same Madison rooftop, same afternoon. Pollen out, photons in.
A film of tree pollen is the single biggest production thief in residential systems each spring. It's too fine to see from the ground, but it scatters light before it ever reaches the cells.
You won't notice it. Your inverter will.
Marquis Mason
Solar Alchemist · Residential cleaning, Madison WI
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“I thought solar panel cleaning was pointless.”
Same array, same rooftop, after the storm vs. after my visit
“I didn't think your services were needed until I watched my panels during a heavy rain storm. The rain did nothing and I realized I would need to scrub them to get all the gunk off.”
The “before” was taken right after a heavy Wisconsin storm. The “after” is what one professional visit looks like. No filters, no edits, just a customer who saw the truth with his own eyes.
Solar Alchemist Customer
Southern Wisconsin · Post-storm cleaning
You don't need sunshine to see the difference.
Same array, same gray sky, minutes apart. No filters.
Sun hides dirt behind glare. Overcast days don't. The “before” reads flat and dusty, the “after” reflects the clouds like a mirror, meaning every available photon is now reaching the cells.
Cloudy days are when clean panels work hardest.
Marquis Mason
Solar Alchemist · Southern Wisconsin field results
30 seconds. That's all it took.
The pollen the hose left behind
Before I started cleaning this array, I gave it a quick rinse with the hose, the same thing rain does to your panels. I turned around for no more than 30 seconds. When I looked back, this is what was still sitting on the glass.
Pollen, dust, and bird debris don't rinse off in the usual way. They smear, dry, and bake into the glass, costing you a few percent of production a season.
This is how “rain” cleans your panels.
Marquis Mason
Solar Alchemist · Same array, before and after
Rain doesn't clean panels. I do.
One week of storms vs. one professional visit
It rained and stormed all last week, and this is what the panels looked like after. Did all that rain clean them like they say? Look at what I was able to accomplish with one visit.
This is what professional cleaning can do.
Marquis Mason
Solar Alchemist · Southern Wisconsin field results
Residential solar array after professional cleaning
My soft-brush cleaning technique in action
Spotless panels, manufacturer-matched and ready to work.
Professional cleaning service in Dane County, WI
Another satisfied customer in Dane County
Real Results for Real Customers
My customers typically see noticeable production gains after professional cleaning, especially when panels haven't been cleaned in over a year. The visual difference is immediate, your panels will look dramatically better.
What My Customers Say
“You just don't realize the film that builds up over the season until it's gone. Manufacturer-matched cleaning, clear before/after photos.”
Dane County Homeowner
Southern WI
“Straightforward pricing, honest advice, and a spot-free finish. Would book again.”
Dane County Homeowner
Southern WI
“Manufacturer-matched method, no walking on the glass, and my monitoring app showed a real production bump the next day.”
Middleton Homeowner
Dane County, WI