snow and solar?

[stevevoid]

hi there, i have just bought a barn 1200metres up in the French Pyrenees, there will be lots of snow for approximately a third of the year, should i rule out solar panels/solar water heating due to snow coverage on the panels? or is there a way around it, such as having the panels on a certain angle so that the snow cannot stick? Any help/suggestions/ideas would be appreciated!

Yeah, solar panels won't work if they're covered in snow but I did some research and found this company that might have something for you.

http://wholesalesolar.com/products.f...ount-info.html

[screener]

I live at 56 degrees north and only about 700 metres so this may be a little irrelevant. We designed our house with a tall south side so we can put passive or minimally active solar space heating panels on that wall. The snow gives a big boost to the collectors utility in the winter and they can be used as coolers in the summer.

Because we get -30 to -40 C for stretches in the winter we pretty much gave up on the idea of water heating in the winter. We did set the angle of the south roof slope at 45 degrees so that water heaters could be effective in the summer. Unfortunately we haven't gotten to that stage yet, but with fuel prices going up I'm glad we looked at that when we were building.

We've had air circulating out of a passive south wall system at 25 degrees C when the temperature outside is -30 C. Lots of bright snow helps. However it's also nice to get the sunlight directly into the house through large windows if you have a means of shutting them off well at night, or when cloudy and cold.

[stevevoid]

thanks for that info, not entirely sure what you mean by passive/minimally active solar space heating panels. Is that absorbing the suns rays to heat air which is then distributed arond house? Back to the original question, if i had solar water heating panels set at an angle that maybe wasnt optimum for the sun, but was enough for the snow to slide down and not stick, say 55-65 degrees, would that work or would the snow always find a way of sticking? Has anybody had experience of using a vertical evacuated tube system for heating water for underfloor heating? surely with the tubes being vertical there is no chance of snow sticking to it/reducing system efficiency? again, any ideas/thoughts greatly appreciated.

[screener]

Yes that is a the kind of system I meant. the suggestion I've had offered is to put a small fan to draw the air down through the wall collector so the air absorbs more heat on it's way to circulating through the house.

Snow wilk stick to anything at any angle if conditions are right. Really cloudy, really cold days will prevent that melt-off that you want. your nearest weather office should be able to give you stats on how often that kind of spell can last so you can consider a back-up.