As the seasons change and the weather starts to get colder, you might be wondering about how this impacts the performance of solar panels. If you live in a region with cold, dreary winters, it may seem like solar installation would be a bad investment half of the year. This is a common misconception – here’s why you shouldn’t let cold weather deter you from considering solar installation.
Solar panels require sunlight – not heat
The amount of power your panels generate is a factor of how much sun exposure they receive throughout the day. This amount is reduced in the wintertime, when days are shorter and the sun is lower in the sky, but it’s far from eliminated. Homeowners can expect to see production drop in the winter months, but the drop is not as extreme as many think, and it occurs in sunnier climates too.
Do panels work when it snows?
Even when your panels are covered with snow, they can still create electricity. The sunlight will penetrate through a light . Significant snow accumulation on panels is rare – solar panels are designed to attract the maximum amount of light possible, are tilted on an angle, and have a slick surface – all of which tends to result in snow melting off much more quickly than on other roof surfaces.
The benefit of net metering in winter
Net metering is a solar billing structure that allows homeowners to accumulate credits from system overproduction in the summer months to use during the winter months. This ensures that homeowners reap the benefits of solar investment year round – it works in a similar way to rollover minutes on old cell phone plans.
There are some other solar billing structures – like net billing – that work in a similar fashion to mitigate the drop-off in production seen in the wintertime.
All in all, the colder months have no impact on the long-term investment value of solar installation. If solar makes sense for your home, it makes as much sense in December as it does in July. To learn more about solar and how it can work for your home, click below to schedule your free, no-pressure consultation today.
