simple answer...

they stop working.......

NONE have heaters in them(well ,none I know of)

Actually power output goes down as they get 'dirty' from dust,leaves, snow, neighbour's shingles, etc.......

Also to get maximum power output, they need to be realigned, at least seasonally, some 'smart' ones will do it daily.

usually the installer will(should ?)  align for best AVERAGE power, like life, it's a compromise.

There is an 8 acre solar farm right behind my place which supplies much of the power for the city sewer plant next to it.  They also have a nat gas engine generator which runs at night using gas produced by the sewage.  Here in Colorado the snow usually slides off the collectors in a few hours after the storm passes.  I've never seen anyone washing the panels so I guess they rely on the occasional rain storm to keep them clean.

I was hoping they would have a 240 volt outlet somewhere near the property line that I could plug into, no luck! LOL

A thorough covering of snow WILL reflect most of the visible light, and practically ALL the UV, but  Very Near Infrared and below, will will still pass through to the cell, and be absorbed.  The cell won't generate a substantial amount of PV output, but they DO convert it to heat, which will melt snow off fairly quickly.

The circumstance which is most common, is a late-night snowfall, as daytime snowfalls tend to melt off as the accumulation lands... but nighttime doesn't.  A broom on a long stick will do a pretty good job of it.

Solar tracking DOES have an affect on performance, however, an array's gathering efficiency at low angles (when the sun is closest to horizon) is substantially lower simply because the incoming solar energy is substantially lower because the distribution of energy is skewed by being 'bent' through the atmosphere... essentially, Fresnel effect.  You can SEE what happens when light passes through a prism- it fans out at varying angles based on light frequencies... this same thing happens when light 'bends' through the atmosphere, and it's the reason why you get deep red, orange, and yellow colors at sunrise and sunset.  During a low-angle (i.e. very northerly latitudes in winter), the sun is lower on the horizon for a longer duration.

While you could gain efficiency by TRACKING the array to that direction, the performance improvement is NOT going to yield the kind of output that one sees by doing same tracking during mid-summer.

One visual way to quantify the 'bending' is color... the OTHER, is simply noting the size of the sun or moon at the horizon, as compared to later.  The large appearance is result of the greatest 'bending'.

    Solar farm behind my brother, depending on the temp, amount of cloudy days and snow, the winter a few yrs ago snow was on them for two months.

   One year the snow couldnt slide off because it piled up to high, there is always snow on them.

To me a Farm is land where food is produced. Electricity is not food.

I wish there was a standard panel, so the output in different areas of the country could be compared.

Michigan is rated at 47th. of the 48 continnetal states. Is it worth taking up food producing land with solar panels, in MI. rather than in States where there is a lot of sun shine? Sometimes so much that crops do not do well.  

I'll agree with you on the 'farm' concept, Dusty- turning a viable field into a solar farm is silly, particularly in our lattitude and environment.  Out in the southwest, where desert doesn't grow crops without incredible resource investment of irrigation, it's a different story.

The best place for solar panels, is where there's already a roof, or a need for shade.  The 10KW system I helped build on Clinch Mountain in Tennessee, is basically an extension of a tractor shed...  like a big carport.

We DID make it directable for elevation.  changing for azimuth was not a potential of significant improvement, and elevation really only needs to be changed during spring and fall... it's done with a pair of trailer screw-jacks.  Crank it full up for summer, full down for winter, the stops put it at proper elevation... the change is only about 34 degrees (by comparison, the earth's tilt is 23.43 degrees).  The net change of solar angle due to tilt is 23.43*2= 46.86 degrees... but summer high-angle capture is so high, that trying to give it more, yields no change in absorption (full load is full load, right?).

During winter, the cell angle is low enough that snow and leaves slide off nicely.

Dust is most problematic in areas that get little rain, high wind, and infrequent rain.  Rain washes them off nicely, and while wind blows debris on, it also blows them off.

The most troublesome circumstance, is birds, geese and ducks.  Gotta wash the poop off if they hang out there often... a really good rain will clear small bird droppings, but goose pooh don't.

Don'tcha just love the way they lay out the whole 'plan' so that no matter WHO wants to go WHERE, they ALL have to drive through a maze, concentrating all traffic through the same paths?

That's a demonstration of the insolence of 'social engineering'...  'Traffic Engineers' refer to it as 'traffic calming'... attempts to get people to reduce speeds...

Any moron who looks at it, will recognize what will REALLY happen.  During morning commute hours, every other house on the block will have someone leaving, zigzagging through all that sprawl, to drop off two kids at the elementary, then repeating the process to find a way out to main thoroughfare to get to work...

kids SHOULD be WALKING to school,.....

I feel sorry for EMS and FIRE having to drive in the 'mouse mazes'.....

'farm' is just a name that everyone can understand. heck there's a whole herd of them panels in the field, and someone is 'milking' them for few elecrons and a LOT of cash...

plat really means 'plot' ... must hvae phat phingers like me......

BIGGEST idiotic  thing an 'engineer' has done is down at the creek, last week.

On thursday, the construction crew  carefully dug a soft side of a creekbed and placed in 5 chunks of 'armour stone', each about 4x4x5 FEET, solid stone,row of 3 ,then 2 on top.MASSIVE, should last until the 4,000 year flood comes. BTW Greensville Creek(has it's own website !)..well, a night of light drinkin and you could pee more than what flows....sorry I digress..

Anyway , I drive there Friday ( less than 24 hrs) and there's 5 MORE stones, neat.

NO !

The 'engineer' told the contractor to REMOVE the stones, replace with maybe 800#s of 4" stones... so now the bank has a layer of loose rock on top of the loose base material.

Already ,less than 3 days, some of the 4" stones have washed down into the creek..sigh

EVERYONE (cept the engineer) agrees 'shoring up' the bank was a GREAT idea as stones were on site leftovers AND there's a driveway NEXT to the bank,used by 3-4 businesses. I'll be taking pictures when a semi falls into the creek....

idiot, no wonder my American Aunt would NOT hire any 'ring bearer'.

Well, it's there now, I suspect it'll be gone once Spring comes

Has been my feeling most of my life. I always just had this thing I wanted to grow things. The most any of us can do for mankind, grow food so all can eat.

But little by little my mind has changed,  probably the acks and pains of working all those years. But in a time of making only a penny or 2 for a years work, and all the money you put out to grow a crop. How much less would we as farmer make if we had all the really good acres of ground that are covered by houses and other buildings growing crops. Besides a good dozer could clear houses just as easy as trees and brush have been cleared in the past.  But still makes me sad to see the best dirt growing houses.

On the other hand right near me in a area with no irrigation water and average rainfall of about 8 inches. So growing much is a very hit and miss thing. The envirros  got all hot and bothered because putting solar panels over a 1000 or 2 acres was going to be terrible. It would disrupt a endangered mouse and lizard.  The endangered mouse has whiskers just a tad different than it's cousin's that are not endangered.  

Just 1 mile west of me is the Long Island Solar Farm.

220 acres of woods torn up for sake of being green.

30MW set up. This is on the grounds for the former US army's Camp Upton.

Built up for WWI, then totally torn down, then rebuilt for WWII. After

the war, it became the Brookhaven National Laboratory. Nuclear Physics.

They have big machines, accelerators, research reactor and such.

View looking north. Body of water in the hazy distance is the Long Island Sound. Beyond that is Connecticut coast. In the very upper right corner of the picture ,tall building on the beach, is the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant. A big financial fiasco. Cost the ratepayers 6 billion dollars and it never make a single watt onto the grid. They did load it up with fuel, got it to fission, irradiated/contaminated. Then they shuttered it down for decommissioning. Typical New York screw up. We can't even get a Bass Pro Store built. However the plant is a source of electricity-they ran an DC undersea cable

to the mainland. Ultimately, I think the electricity comes from Canada.

I link to a tour of the shutdown plant. Pretty interesting.

https://www.scoutingny.com/scouting-a-decommissioned-nuclear-power-plant/" rel="nofollow - https://www.scoutingny.com/scouting-a-decommissioned-nuclear-power-plant/

So that 220 acre solar "farm" has a special deal with the utility. They get $0.34 for every KWH they send out to the grid. It makes 44GWH per year. That adds up to $14 million dollars per year. Does your 200 acre farm gross $14 million per year?

However, If I had a grid connected solar system they will only pay me 4 cents per excess KWH that I send to the grid. Not 34. Plus they limit you to a 10KW system.

So to push greenness, they just finagled a rate to subsidize it, the regular customers are footing the bill.

I don't know if they clear the snow off of those panels.

 I won't be suprised if the panel don't move and they can dump snow

https:///youtu.be/mBcY3W5WgNU" rel="nofollow - https:///youtu.be/mBcY3W5WgNU

If we want a RELIABLE power grid it will need some sort of "fossil fuel" plant in it. If we took all "non green" power plants offline we would all be sitting in the dark staring at a wall

     To bad O'l Al is not sharing more of the profits with you. 

Figured YOU would be that Stupid.  We are at MAX Threshold of efficacy with Solar Cells, that from a MEMC (Look that up) Engineer my wife worked with and now works for INTEL.  All the BS and Games of Words plays out is Nothing Better or more efficient that what is presently available and by Science basis NOTHING else any better.  Only way to make cheaper is Third World production.  Minerals, glass, base compounds for Array as Cadmium Arsenic Selenium and YES ALL are TOXIC.  Of the two dozen people my wife worked with On Solar Cells Product Engineering, and she is also in the possible contaminated, NINE have Died PANCREATIC Cancers, all before 55 y.o.  Six are being treated for that, suspect is Cadmium or Selenium Poisoning.

BTW, MEMC Corp was instrumental in the LATEST Recipe for Solar Panels upon Silicon Wafer for BEST Availed power production.  In the last Four Decades up to fourteen different cells had been produced, ALL as or more toxic than the last.

A small article on MEMC a Copany that no longer exists.

https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/suppliers/memc/" rel="nofollow - MEMC - Solar Power World (solarpowerworldonline.com)

Oh yeah, he never got any.  But we got the bill fer what, like a half a billion $ ?

.

One method to fix the snow accumulation and dust loss and tracking losses is buy additional panels.

Inverters will be about as much as the panels.

I'm doing a ground mount and getting a tractor car port out of it.

I was looking at a whole house nat gas generator or backup solar and went the solar path. No control over nat gas, but I do over solar.

.

I dont think the govt put candles or fuel lamps out of service while SUBSIDIZING LIGHT BULBS..... thats the difference...... If solar is a GOOD IDEA, it will PAY FOR ITSELF thru private money... NOT the GOVT picking who wins.

re: Holy crimeny! How long have solar panels been on the market, 4 decades now?

over 6 decades that 60+ years....

I used them to charge up my battery powered tube radios when I was young.....

The good thing about snow on solar panels, is that the snow reflects sunlight back out into space... which is unlike trees, grass, plants, asphalt roads, rooftops, and solar farms, which absorb solar energy and inevitably, result in heat.  Solar panels, being dark, absorb solar energy, but only a small portion becomes photovoltaic yield, MOST of the solar absorption is converted localized heat, which contributes significantly to local temperature.

So as long as they're well-covered with snow, they're preventing global warming...

Once they're uncovered, regardless of wether they're operating, they're contributing to climate change.

What we need, is a more assertive ice age.  Let's start a go-fund-type program to help pay for an ice age. 

We can start by building an induction coil around the equator, connect it to an inverter powered by solar cells, and run some low frequency AC through it to nullify what's left of the earth's magnetosphere (it is degrading now, as we're starting another pole reversal)...  that will allow such a significant rise in solar absorption that the oceans will evaporate faster, causing moisture to travel to the poles, freeze and fall as snow and ice, and as those caps build, the temperate zones will migrate south, bringing glaciation south into north Georgia, the Texas panhandle, all of Arizona, and most of California... 

After a few hundred millenia, when the magnetic polarity of the earth finishes reversing, and has reached about 50-or-so degrees inclination the other way, the magnetosphere will rebuild, blocking all those crazy DNA-scrambling gamma-rays, icebergs will break off and float into the Caribbean, and whatever mutants survive, can ride bamboo bicycles to Lowe's and buy $1300 lawn chairs...