How does dirt, twigs and leaves affect the efficiency of my system?

Much like shading from other obstructions, anything, including dirt, bird droppings or leaves will reduce your output as it is not letting the sunshine through to the panel in that spot and will affect the efficiency of your solar power system.

The difference in clean and dusty/dirty panels in output electricity generation can be about 5%. Heavy rain can clean panels regularly cleaning will assist in maximising the solar output.