Wrenches - Lately we've been called out to repair or upgrade several ~5 year old PV installations in the Bay Area. It is always interesting to see how they're holding up. Apparently it was common to mount panels completely flat (horizontal) on flat roofs back then. This poses a serious problem because the module frame lip catches water and dirt and prevents the panel from washing off in the rain. See a photo here:
http://luminalt.com/temp/flatpanel.JPG Note that two of those panels were broken by a baseball, but you can still see the dirt buildup on the adjacent panels right across all three rows of bypass diodes. Any ideas on what percentage loss that dried dirt is causing? Lesson learned: never tilt panels below 5 degrees, preferably 10 degrees. Cheers, August Goers Luminalt Energy Corporation _______________________________________________ List sponsored by Home Power magazine List Address: RE-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org Options & settings: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List-Archive: http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org List rules & etiquette: www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm Check out participant bios: www.members.re-wrenches.org
