alt Hacker NewsHere in Europe, we got more than a month's worth of foggy, cloudy weather (something that looks like will keep being a thing), which is something I became painfully aware of as an owner of a solar setup.
No amount of battery banks can tide over such a long stretch.
By the way, let me ask you - considering your location, you must be getting a lot of snow, how do you deal with it, is it a problem? Panels are quite hard to reach on the roof.
Replies
yomismoaqui • yesterday at 9:18 PM
Where in Europe? Between Spain and Denmark there is a lot of variance in temperature, sun and rain...
Talking about the weather "in Europe" is like talking about the shoe size a family of 10 wears.
I do indeed get a lot of snow. In January and February it snows roughly once every two days, although usually in small amounts.
Fortunately I have a ground mount. The bottom row is roughly at waist height. I can (and have been) sweeping the panels off with a large push broom. Because my array is so large, I can only reach the bottom half of the array. But this usually is enough. When the panel starts to generate power, it also tends to heat up; the snow on the top half then often slides off on its own.
I might invest in a longer broom. It is not uncommon for people here to own “snow rakes” to remove large snow loads from their roofs. These usually have a rubberized “rake” with a very long aluminum handle. Or the novelty of this might wear off and I’ll just let the panel do its own thing. It is pitched rather steeply (close to 45°) and based on my observations of my neighbors, panels tend to shed the snow on their own eventually.