Hi August, Here in Maine we get pretty decent amounts of snow. There isn't any foolproof way to keep your panels clear without doing it manually because we sometimes get sticky, half ice, half snow type of precipitation, but here's some of the things we do. > > > > 1. Do you typically mount arrays flush to the roof? If so, I'm assuming > that roof pitches are generally designed to handle the various snow load > and snow-shed scenarios depending on how much snow the area sees?
We do typically flush mount, providing the roof pitch is the typical 10-12 pitch. If it is less we have used tilt up racks, but that seriously cuts down the available usable array sq.footage. The roofs here are built to handle snow loads exceeding what we would normally get, but you will still often see people on less than 10 pitched roofs cleaning them off in the middle of Feb. > > 2. Does the height off the roof matter? In other words, is it better to > mount low to the roof or higher above the roof. Does snow wedge under the > array? We have always mounted as close to the peak as possible. I have seen arrays, not installed by my company, in which the snow has built up over time on the top of an array mounted too far below the roof line/peak. The snow melts and refreezes and quickly becomes a liability to the effectiveness of the array, at least. We have moved the entire array to the top of the roof line and the clients no longer had that problem. Of course, for customers that rely on a roof rake to remove snow from their array, moving the panels to the highest point on the roof essentially removes that option. > > 3. Are there products out there designed to help shed snow? We have used Rain-X. It does seem to help. Occasional re-application is necessary. Beside that, I haven't used any other option. Maybe a solar powered electric heater :-) would work? With pole or frame mounts that are adjustable we tend to tilt them up to 80 or 85 degrees to facilitate snow shedding. > I'm sure you'll hear a lot more from other NE wrenches, amongst, geographically, others. Daryl DeJoy NABCEP Certified PV installer Penobscot Solar Design _______________________________________________ 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