Welcome to Cranky Puppy Farm!

This blog belongs to two Gen X-er's smackdab in downtown Kansas City where we've been renovating and decorating two old Victorians built in the 1890's. Our life is filled with 3 demanding Pomeranians (1 of them cranky, of course), honking cars, noisy neighbors and the hustle and bustle of city life but we dream of the day when we can move to our 40-acre farm and hear nothing but the wind and the cows next door. Until then, we're chronicling our triumphs and mishaps here as we try to garden and preserve on 2 city lots, raise chickens, and learn all those things we should have learned from our grandparents. Welcome to our world - we hope you'll stay awhile!

Solar Panels and Snow

Sunday, March 01, 2015


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!
 
 

1 comment:

  1. 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

    ReplyDelete

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