Drat. Winter just won't leave! Since Friday, we've gotten about 3 inches of steady snow that has now tapered off into semi-sunshine. I guess I can't complain, since they forecasted up to 8 inches.
But snow on solar panels means we get no electricity production until it melts off. Zip. Zero. Zilch. With the array over 12 feet wide and almost 10 feet in the air on one end, we've had to be rather creative with how we get the snow off the panels.
Luckily, I was able to take advantage of an awesome deal that Home Depot had a couple of weeks ago on this Snow Joe telescoping roof rake. Normally, $39.99 and we caught it for $17.99. I pity the poor people that actually have to get out and use this thing to get snow off their roof! But it works really well for our panels, as it telescopes out to 21 feet and is really lightweight. The scraper head is made of a poly material and is a nice 24-inch length. The only gotcha is that it has a tendency to catch on the panel frames. Once it's warmer, J. is going to rig it with a squeegee edge that should fix that problem.
On Thursday, we generated 56.02 kilowatt hours. That's way over what we projected our peak power production would be (45 kWH). And it's still winter. I can't wait to see what peak we hit in mid-summer when the sunlight hours are longer and sun is right overhead.
Time to go cruise everyone's blogs and see how they're whiling away winter's end. Stay warm, everyone!
This year on the west coast we didn't have to worry about snow on the panels, but this summer we'll need to worry about the lack of snow on the mountains. - Margy
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