My Experience With Solar 9 Years Later

SolarLurker

Hey,

I have not been posting much on the forum, once all the heavy lifting was done with my install there was not much to talk about. Solar is pretty hands off once you get it up and going.

I was asked to write about my experience on a popular financial site, I thought maybe you all would dig reading about my experience.

I used my numbers from when Installed my system and discussed the payback and performance. Cost and incentives are both lower today so the ROI and payback are still about the same.

https://esimoney.com/are-solar-panels-worth-it/

Estragon

They must have a different kind of snow in Colorado to produce "a serviceable amount of power under several inches of snow". Mine reliably produce next to nothing under that much snow - not even enough to stop charge controllers from running batteries down with their little bit of self-consumption over a period of weeks if panels aren't cleared.

SolarLurker

I am in northeast PA not Colorado. However, I can’t imagine the snow varies by state.

The panels will accumulate a few inches of snow, and surprisingly they system manages to produce electricity. Then usually the snow than slides off in a epic snow avalanche.

The first year I had the panels I would brush the snow off my ground mounted panels, and eventually I realized it wasn’t making that much of a difference.

I am by no means suggesting you get any where near full power under snow, but It has been surprisingly more than I’d expect.

Estragon

My CCs use ~4w self-consumption load times 2 CCs. A ~4kw array can't stop that from drawing battery bank down if it stays covered by several inches of snow.

Now, that's the whole array covered... IRL an array may have some uncovered/less covered bits, which will heat if there's sun hitting that can reach panels. These bits may produce some power depending on orientation, as well as heating and melting snow for the epic snow slide.

In my case, if it gets covered it tends to stay covered entirely until either I clear it or spring. In the meantime, near nil production.

Here, snow varies from year to year. Some years the snow is sticky and thick early, then freezes and stays frozen to the array. Other years, it's fluffy in early winter, and doesn't stick so much and exposed pv melts anything that does.

SolarLurker

We don't have snow like that here. Even big snow storms melt off in a day or two.

We rarely bother plowing the driveway anymore, the sun hits the tire tracks and the snow melts off.

The residential system is a shallow angle and some times that one ices up.

We have the commercial one at 31 degrees and doesn't ice up to speak of.