thomas malloy wrote:
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
John Steck wrote:
I might be mistaken, but I think there is a significant performance
drop at
low temperatures with solar cells... someone please correct if wrong.
Groping around on the web I ran into an off-hand claim that they
actually perform better at low temperatures, here:
http://www.wagonmaker.com/power.html
Haven't dug into it any farther at this point.
What's worse, there's a totally catastrophic performance drop when
they're covered with 2" of snow, or an inch or two of ice.
Sounds like a job for electrical heater cables to me.
That, plus a 45 degree tilt, might be all that's needed.
Then we'd just need to be sure they were well enough anchored to the
roof so that the tilted solar panels wouldn't turn into a "solar sail"
and fly away in the first storm that comes along...
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