Suffering under Solar Hibernation? Clean your Panels!

We had a sunny week, but hardly made energy. Why? There was snow on the panels. Lucky for us, they are close to the ground and CAN be cleared. We got a special foam "broom" for delicate surfaces (recommended for solar panels). I finally got around to clear the panels on Thursday noon. The result was amazing: Even though there was still a bit of sow/ice left, the panels cleared within a few minutes and were back from hibernation.

Before

Immediately after snow removal

A few minutes later

We made > 86 kWh today (Friday), which amounts to roughly $16 in electricity difference compared to the days before. So unless your panels are on your roof, get out there and clean them on those sunny winter days! Just make sure to use the right equipment that does not scratch the surface.

The graph below from our monitoring system shows the energy production almost halfway through my cleaning exercise: Most panels are still dark, i.e. do not produce energy. On the bottom, you can notice the flat curve (basically zero energy) for the days before.

We are Online...

... and generating electricity!

It took until early October 2013 until the solar PV system went online. So we are finally in the business of making energy. What an exciting moment. I met with my fellow solar group members and the installer at the site on October 10 to get an introduction to the installation and monitoring system.

The group members with the installer's engineer

The GMP group net metering setup took some massaging, but we soon got it under control. The first few days of operation turned out to be very sunny, so we got off to a good start. Despite some early morning shadows on the array in Fall/Winter, we should be on target for our annual energy goal.

Two Rows with 66 Panels in Total

Soaking up the Sun

The Solar Array is Under Construction

To supply the energy needed for our mostly electric powered house, we decided to look into a solar PV array. It was planned to be constructed on the common land where the exposure to the sun is much better than on our own roof. After discussing the idea with neighbors in January of 2013, that plan grew into a larger community system with three partners initially (maybe more later). We talked to various installers and decided on a rack-mounted system of slightly over 20,000 kWh annual production capacity.

Permitting and planning took longer than expected and we moved the location due to neighbors' concerns in the end. We also had to set up a legally and financially sound member's agreement and form a LLC to run the system.

It took until September 2013 until construction of our community (net-metered) Solar Array finally began. Better late than never. Here are a few construction photos...

By now, we already learned that smaller electric utilities do not take on new group metered setups any more. They will not offer the 6c adder per kWh generated electricity and also offering much lower rates in general. This is bad news for Solar in Vermont as it makes the whole idea financially unattractive.
So it was not a bad idea to get started with that project long before the house went up.

UPDATE (May 2014): The VT legislation decided to increase the net metering limits from 4% to 15% of the utilities' capacity in their 2014 session. So  net metering will have a realistic chance to become mainstream. Go solar!