I am so envious of people with 5 or 6 kw of PV on their roofs..
Around here, almost everyone who gets a roof full, has a grid-tied system. No batteries.
So when the grid fails, their systems stop working. Luckily, the grid is very reliable here.
I was looking at this house (above) on Sunday, and thinking about the deep
snow that everyone had on the roofs last winter.
If something like that happens again, these folks could be in for trouble.
The gutter and the strips of shingles right above it, are going to hold snow and ice.
It's what we call an
Ice Dam area. Whereas the PVs are
slippery.
When the weight of 2 feet of snow gets to be too much, it's avalanche time.
The gutter will be torn off as a couple tons of snow and ice, slide down.
Anyone in the front yard had better run for it!
If I do a PV install on my house, I'm going to let the PV panels over-hang
the roofing about 3".
So the rain running off the bottom edge will fall into the gutter,
but during an avalanche, the snow & ice will be able to slide over the gutter.
If the mounts are holding the panels up 4 to 6 inches off the roof,
the sliding action after each snow storm will likely allow the snow to keep sliding off.
Not allowing it to accumulate and become hard-pack underneath.
We had a thin layer of ice over about 2 feet on our roofs, but our backyard
panels were too slick to hold much..
Even ice won't last when the sun hits any part of a PV..
