[RE-wrenches] Snow Guards

[Ray Walters]

We designed a system for a location at almost 12000 ft that gets huge 
snow loads.  We just added a third rail under the modules (roof mount 
4:12), and its held up well for over 10 years of torture.  No snow 
guards either.  It does however, not clear in the winter, and is not 
used until May.

Ray Walters
Remote Solar

On 3/6/2025 12:48 PM, Sam Haraldson via RE-wrenches wrote:
> We've been installing Alpine Snowguards with great regularity for the 
> past few years.  We operated under the incorrect assumption that they 
> were rated for 150psf snow loads based on materials of theirs that 
> indicated that at weights higher than 150 an engineer should be 
> consulted.  We were also unfortunately unaware that 6" depths should 
> be cleared until quite recently.  We are experiencing a winter of 
> above-average accumulation and we've had multiple failures (minor, but 
> failures nonetheless) at the lower edge of arrays with the Alpine 
> product installed.  The "snow dogs" which get placed throughout the 
> array are bomber but the bottom edge is somewhat weak and can break 
> easily.
>
> As a company we are currently discussing how we tactfully reach out to 
> clients that have this product installed regarding the 6" rule and 
> whether we should proactively remove the product knowing full well 
> that in certain areas of our installation territory we can see 
> accumulations easily 10 times that.  As for alternate products we have 
> not come across anything that claims much higher capabilities than this.
>
> We have not seen failures on the solar module frames and fortunately 
> only on the guard itself (so far).  But it's still only March and 
> there's likely a lot more snow to come so that remains to be seen.
>
> Cheers,
> Sam
>
>
> OnSite Energy <https://onsiteenergyinc.com/> 	
> Sam Haraldson
> Operations Specialist
> (406) 551-6135
> 1515 N. Rouse Ave Bozeman, MT 59715
> Locally owned and operated since 2012
> 	B Corporation <https://onsiteenergyinc.com/bcorp>
>
>
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