- Rooftop solar panels make a warm, sheltered home for pigeons in winter
- Pigeon droppings are acidic and can damage the panels
- Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, disturbing an active nest is illegal
It looks like UK homeowners and renters with plug-in solar panels have a new and terrifying enemy: pigeons.
The benefits of plug-in solar are well known: while they won’t wipe out your energy bills altogether they’ll pay for themselves by lowering your electricity usage from the grid. But nobody told us about the pigeon poop.
The Cooldown has spotted a fascinating thread on Reddit’s SolarUK subreddit where a would-be buyer asked for words of wisdom from more experienced solar users: what things should they look for?
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And in among very practical suggestions, one issue kept swooping in: birds, specifically pigeons.
Why pigeons could be a problem for your plug-in panels
If like me you live near a pigeon owner, or if you’ve been in the city center lately, you’ll be vividly aware that pigeons poop.
A lot.
That poop is no ordinary poop. Pigeon droppings are a health hazard, and contain uric acid. That’s what strips the paint from your car if you don’t wash it off quickly enough, and it’s a potential headache for UK solar panel owners.
The Redditors offering advice were experienced solar owners, most of whom have had panels on their homes for seven to 10 years. And it turns out that the area behind/below a panel makes a pretty great place for pigeons to nest, and that means in addition to extra poop from your pigeon pals there’s also a risk of them bringing up flammable twigs to build their nests.
It’s an offence to disturb an active wild bird’s nest (as stated in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981) so prevention is definitely the best approach unless you want to spend a long time waiting for your new baby pigeon neighbors to fledge. You don’t need to do much: galvanized mesh is very effective, provided the gaps are small enough to prevent birds becoming trapped.
Again and again the advice from experienced Redditors was the same: pigeon-proof your panels, and do it at installation: it’s pain to retro-fit, and more expensive too.
That’s less of an issue with balcony solar, of course, but if a panel’s on your roof it seems wise to make it pigeon-proof.
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Carrie Marshall
