Winter - effect on solar Part1

As we entered winter, I'm often asked - how does that affect the electricity generation from solar panels? Certainly the shorter daylight hours reduce the potential for kwh, but this year the question was more often related to the snow we have had. In CT this winter, our ground has been covered by snow since the Xmas-NewYear holiday until March. More than 90days! In fact, we received some record snowfalls.

Our panels are on a pitched roof and rather tightly spaced. Thus, the snow can start to slide off as you see in these photos. Our standing seam metal roof has snow guards to limit hazard below, because as you can see, when that accumulation slides, it slams (look at snow splat on pavement below). What was unexpected was how much snow we got (2ft in one storm) over the winter with no thaw period between storms. It did get to be a problem as to where snow could be pushed, and still maintain access to the yard for materials deliver.

After several storms, buildings started collapsing. Usually barns at farms or storage shed industrial structures that were light engineered on the limit of building code allowances. Still, we weren't taking any chances and started shoveling snow off our office roof (the only flat roof area we have). You can see by this photo that it was a lot of snow, up to our shoulder as we shoveled it away. The right photo is our courtyard area where some equipment for the solar array is located. The snow on the pitched roof area has curled and built up substantially. It couldn't be simply removed, and the buildup was worrisome.

It snowed and snowed and snowed!! It was quite the winter!! Despite the snow shed from our panels as shown in the above photo , we were getting a "DC fault" code causing the inverter to cease generating any electricity. We couldn't access the roof safely to confirm what was causing the fault, but the "DC" indication confirms it was at the panels. My next post will show the effects.