Entrepreneur Needed for Winter Solar Power Fix
“…in regions where homeowners have long rolled their eyes at shoveling driveways, add another cold-weather chore: cleaning off the solar panels. “At least I can get to them with a long pole and a squeegee,” said Alan Stankevitz, a homeowner in southeast Minnesota.” As he patiently squeegees off his stationary solar panels, day, after day, after day, throughout the long arduous winter in Minnesota…
Do you just accept this story as further proof that “it isn’t easy being green”? Do you see no alternative for this poor man but to just go out there and work this backbreaking labor for green energy? Do I hear you snort derisively?
Or… are you able to think creatively? Come on; give me your ideas for solving this. How hard would it be to plan for this kind of weather condition? Couldn’t cold weather solar providers offer a solution to this problem? I can see two very easy possible fixes right away. What solutions can you think of?
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Caveat. Renewable solutions do not utilize fossil power. Let me know your ideas in the comments. Maybe you will start the little startup that makes millions off that solution… and we at Cleantechnica can write about your idea in a few years.
This blog brings you news of renewable solutions invented by others daily. Today , its your turn to sharpen your thinking-out-of-the-box skills.
The market for this snowy climate solar solution should be good, because:
“On the other hand, the panels can get extra power from sunlight reflected off nearby snow. And like other electronic gear, solar panels work better when cold.
Mr. Stankevitz said that on some rare winter days, when the Minnesota sky is clear, the weather is freezing and the sun is shining brightly, his panels can briefly churn out more electricity than they were designed to produce, more than on the balmiest days of summer.”
Image from Day Creek Journal
Story from the New York Times
What about a larger motorized version of the squeegee. It could pass from side to side using a garage door opener motor and pulleys. You could activate it from inside or just put it on a timer. You could even use the motion sensor to detect the height of the snow. You would have to reprogram the brains of the opener though to work in reverse. When the sensors are blocked because of snow build up it would signal the squeegee to pass. I would also spray the panels with teflon and angle the squeegee like a snow plow. This As for the freezing rain on contact… there is not much on can do. To heat it off is just wasting the generated power. Maybe micro vibrations, but then again wasted energy. The best is to get it off as soon as possible. You may need to incorporate an H2O sensor.
Or you could try a low tech idea:
Since your panels are not attached to the roof you can change the angle of the panels during the winter (modify the structure of course). I know this will decreases the overall efficiency but so does 6” of snow. Check out this photo of a barn with three different roof pitches. The center section (probably a 12:5) has no snow but the other two less steep do.
http://www.fotosearch.com/sc/CSP013/0136427/
You may want to look into hydrophobic coatings. They are used on satellite dishes to keep the snow and ice from sticking.
Being from Texas, I’ll never deal with that problem. But the problem we have in Texas that the hot summer sun heating the solar cells with the module heats up too high causing loss of efficiency.
I’ve put a lot of thought into that problem and I think my idea can work for those in Minn also.
In Texas the panels get extremely hot which causes inefficiency like I stated earlier. My solution is to install 1/2 or 3/8 PVC tubes behind panel and have an anti-freeze solution pumped to a water heater (solar thermal hot water - direct from the panel).
Now seeing your problem, I think if the inlet to the HW tank have a tee so that in the Minn. winter the solution from the rear of the panel can be diverted to an area where just enough heat can be absorbed to melt snow like an attic space or something?
To the heater people:
My car heater in the back window wouldn’t remove any decent amount of snow in a day; it only works on the thin ice build up. 220 WATTS to heat that car window and the phase change takes 3 times the energy to change the temp to melting point…
Taking electricity to generate heat is wasteful. Heat from non electric sources is less wasteful but more complex than car-style electric heaters.
You shouldn’t have waste heat coming from your house in the 1st place! Heating is a bigger energy user than electric power; so I won’t be adding to that problem.
You could use the car-style heater to remove ice build up on panels but for snowfall it would be too wasteful to melt it. Look up the costs and power usage for people using driveway snow melting systems. You get so little already for the cost on solar this far north- undermining it further doesn’t help the cost/benefit ratios… (here in MN, its overcast 2/3 of the year)
“You shouldn’t have waste heat coming from your house in the 1st place!” true, but, they do. And it can still be reused. It doesn’t have to vent to air.
So why not use it before you lose it. Funnel the house’s waste heat down in pipes under the driveway (to melt that snow) and over these yard panels to strategically warm the top surface up too to melt off the snow.
(You would need to be able to close it off as soon as its melted, because solar panels work more efficiently in the cold.)
The main thing about the waste heat from the house is that it doesn’t need to be HOT - it just needs to be warmer than freezing.
Or a new idea - how about a transparent covering that moves? Say a slowly rotating cover of some form of plastic, just rotating around the panels. On the underside have some form of natural heatsource or scraper or whatever you can imagine to defrost the plastic as it passes by - some of the frost will already be loosened by having to crack as it is pulled over the edge - aided by some form of toothed scraper perhaps?
If you build it efficiently enough, just let the thing run any time the temperature dips - as it is moving constantly it should be harder to freeze up and break. If not, then simply build it as frost resistant as possible - there are plenty of research on making machinery work in cold weather.
Add a bucket of sensors for starting it at the first hint of snow or rain, add some more to warn in case of breakage - and of course have it warn and stop immediately if it can not pull the load (i.e. something froze that shouldn’t have)
Even if this can not be done, the covering can be of a manual type that you rotate to the underside where you can more easily get at it with a manual scraper.
Hi,
I don’t know much about the weather in that part of the world, but i find simple is best, and the simplest thing i can think of is -
I assume he is getting snow in the winter, when the height of the sun at midday is quite low. I also assume there must be an angle, or steepness at which it’s just too steep to get much snow sticking. If the platform could be tilted in the snowy winter to a much steeper angle, he may get a better angle on the sun, and catch a lot less snow, thin enough for it to melt off, when the sun comes out. As the seasons change, alter the angle of the panels as fits. But nice panel, and that fella looks pretty efficient anyways.
I think when life hands you lemons…you make lemon aid.
Enclose the bottom section of that users solar array, seal it up time and hook up a bbq smoker. I say let the smoke/heat escape past the smoker and get into the enclosure. It helps if you can fill a lot of that dead space in so you are not heating as much space. Just let the smoke escape on the far end. If you must produce heat to rid the array of ice get more than just snow free panels…get some bbq brisket too.
You create a lot of heat during the day that can be reused if you think about it. Cooking, Drying clothes or even running a cleantechnica.com server.
Start your own solar panel cleaning business, stimulate the local economy and employ your neighbors and family.
Knowing nothing about solar panels, I am wondering if it could be installed to rotate toward the ground. It doesn’t snow every day in MN and most of the time we have some fair warning. A system that would allow you to rotate the panel as needed, so it is angled toward the ground…almost upside down. Maybe the reflection from the snow would still allow the panels to function? Otherwise, I don’t think shoveling the panels is a huge deal. It’s part of our lifestyle and some of us actually enjoy it. Melting the ice with little strips of heat might work in November or March…but keep in mind, it is 20 degrees BELOW ZERO in parts on MN today. Of course, it can’t snow when it is that cold.