Cleaning the Solar Panels

There is a drawback to solar panels that the folks selling them to you won't exactly go out of their way to mention. They collect snow, and become useless if you don't shovel them off. They cover an area of our roof pretty much exactly the same size as our driveway. With the driveway, you can walk a shovel if it isn't too deep, or fire up the electric snow blower and clear it off pretty quickly. You wouldn't put a toothbrush on the end of a 30' poll and try to do it from the garage door. Yet, this is pretty much the process for clearing off solar panels. Everything is done above your head. It's a good arm workout, but other than that, it isn't a lot of fun. 

There has to be a better way to do this. I have this idea that we could somehow fasten our electric leaf-blower to the poll to get rid of dustings, but I worry that it is too heavy at 5 lbs. Worth a shot, though. More than a dusting, and I'm afraid we're stuck with the current method.

It's not the end of the world, and it is nobody's fault.

Also important to keeping the electricity flowing is having at least a few hours with no bloody snow. It has been snowing since Sunday night, and here it is Friday. Not really a huge amount, but just enough to make driving a white-knuckle horror, and to preclude the possibility of keeping the things clean. No point anyway, since the sun hasn't shown it's face since last weekend.

However, there is a part of wintering solar panels that is somebody's fault. There's an application (I refuse to use the word abbreviation "app" other than in scorn because they only ever make things more difficult in spite of the marketing about how "convenient" everything will be if you just "download our app") called "Enlighten." It's kind of fun, when it works, because it shows how much electricity you are using and producing. However, the minute there is the slightest chill in the air, it stops transmitting to our router. The panels are still working, but we're blind to what they're producing. It's not much, but I'd love to know. There's a way to reset it, but it involves fussing with your cell phone, standing next to a box outside in the cold, and fiddling with a particular baroque combination of buttons and clicks. In other words, a time consuming nightmare that only works for a few hours, or - if you are very lucky - days, anyway.

"Enlighten" by this bunch of incompetent crooks at this company called "Enphase" = rubbish. It's not like you can't predict that it gets cold in winter, and sometimes it might snow. Word to the wise.