I have been very curious about how snow impacts the panels and on yesterday was a perfect day to do some 'tests' to determine the actual impact of snow.
I had approximately 1 inch of snow on my panels, and this was very light fluffy snow. The day was completely sunny with NO Clouds at all, the PERFECT day for solar panels.
At 9:45AM, the output on the panels, with snow, was 156W. I went and cleared them off. This took approximately 15 minutes. When I checked the output right after I was done clearing them, and the panels were producing 1150W, or approximatly 10 times more with no snow. This is extremely significant and will definitly encourage me to clean them off when possible.
It should be noted that my roof is only 15 degrees or so and I am very careful when I go up on the roof in the winter as it can be very dangerous. I do not recommend doing this for anyone who is not extremely careful AND capeable. I use a nylon broom to clean the panels and the snow comes off very easily assuming it is just snow. If you have ice in there, good luck. My suggestion is to wait it out until it melts it self.
I have no doubt that on a day like yesterday when the sun is shinning all day with NO clouds at all that an inch of snow would have been melted off by 1:00pm but there would have been some missed output until they were cleared that I wanted to capture!
The bottom line is that snow, even only one inch, has a significant impact on the panel performance and so any way possible to clean them will make a big difference during the winter. I would suggest cleaning them with a roof rake of some kind with a very soft attachment to make sure you don't scratch the panels, but I have not tried this yet.
What techniques do you use to clean them, or do you just let the sun take care of it?
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