We designed a system for a location at almost 12000 ft that gets huge
snow loads. We just added a third rail under the modules (roof mount
4:12), and its held up well for over 10 years of torture. No snow
guards either. It does however, not clear in the winter, and is not
used until May.
Ray Walters
Remote Solar
On 3/6/2025 12:48 PM, Sam Haraldson via RE-wrenches wrote:
We've been installing Alpine Snowguards with great regularity for the
past few years. We operated under the incorrect assumption that they
were rated for 150psf snow loads based on materials of theirs that
indicated that at weights higher than 150 an engineer should be
consulted. We were also unfortunately unaware that 6" depths should
be cleared until quite recently. We are experiencing a winter of
above-average accumulation and we've had multiple failures (minor, but
failures nonetheless) at the lower edge of arrays with the Alpine
product installed. The "snow dogs" which get placed throughout the
array are bomber but the bottom edge is somewhat weak and can break
easily.
As a company we are currently discussing how we tactfully reach out to
clients that have this product installed regarding the 6" rule and
whether we should proactively remove the product knowing full well
that in certain areas of our installation territory we can see
accumulations easily 10 times that. As for alternate products we have
not come across anything that claims much higher capabilities than this.
We have not seen failures on the solar module frames and fortunately
only on the guard itself (so far). But it's still only March and
there's likely a lot more snow to come so that remains to be seen.
Cheers,
Sam
OnSite Energy <https://onsiteenergyinc.com/>
Sam Haraldson
Operations Specialist
(406) 551-6135
1515 N. Rouse Ave Bozeman, MT 59715
Locally owned and operated since 2012
B Corporation <https://onsiteenergyinc.com/bcorp>
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