Your system will tick away nicely without you ever having to worry about it. It doesn’t really require any maintenance, and there are no moving parts to go wrong. If someone knocks on your door offering to clean them for a tenner, you may as well take them up on it every year or so – but it’s not absolutely essential, as the rain will do a good enough job. If pigeons or seagulls are using your panels as a perch, they may need cleaning properly more often though.
If you want to maximise the financial benefits of the system, it’s better to use electricity when the sun’s shining rather than in the evening. So it’s best if you use the washing machine or dishwasher, or charge phones or tools during the day. Also, the system will directly power things that are on all the time, like your fridge-freezer.
You can monitor the performance of your system on a daily, monthly and annual basis via the display screen on your inverter. Each day you can check how much electricity is being generated at any moment, how much has been generated that day, and since the system was installed. You can check your figures against the predictions in the analysis you received from your installer, and calculate how much solar energy you’ve harvested, and how much money and carbon you’ve saved.
Thanks to Norman Phipps for the information.