REC Solar workers installing a 5.59 kW solar system on our Aurora, Colo. rooftop in June 2010. The system has performed nicely -- but has it really added to the resale value of our home?

I’ve always been skeptical about the claim that a home solar system adds significantly to a home’s resale value.

[See, for example, the short story published on the Clean Energy Authority Web Site under the headline ‘Lawrence Berkeley Study Confirms That Solar Adds Value’ – and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of other similar stories/entries about solar’s alleged added value.]

And now I have anecdotal, personal confirmation that I’m right to be skeptical.

This Swiss-designed system, called Snowaway, utilizes a runner, pulleys and a tarp-like shovel to clear snow from solar panels.

I’ve written extensively about the problems that snow sitting on solar panels can cause, and, while I’ve complained about the problem, I’ve also offered some possible solutions.

This entry focuses on two additional possible solutions, one from Germany, the other from Switzerland, which I learned about while watching a German news video on YouTube.

We got walloped by a wall of wind suddenly at about 2:30 a.m. last night here in Aurora, Colo. The wind was so powerful that the entire house shuddered like crazy for about 45 minutes.

All I could think about was, ‘I hope our 26 solar panels stay secure on the roof and that the wind doesn’t rip them off, along with the metal rails they sit on and perhaps even the roof itself!’

I’ve had this feeling perhaps two other times since REC Solar installed our 5.59 kW solar system in June of 2010. Luckily, each time, the panels, rails, and roof have remained in place.

That most likely means: a) REC Solar did a good job of securing our rails and panels to the roof; b) we’re almost certainly better off that our panels are flush with the roof angle, not up on tilts.

Eight days after two-feet of snow fell in the Denver area, our neighbor's 5.1 kW system still isn't sufficiently snow free to produce a single kWh of solar electricity.

This is another short entry about snow on solar panels and, no, it’s not a complaint – at least not as I see it. It’s simply an attempt to highlight, albeit in anecdotal fashion, that snow on solar panels does have a substantial impact on solar production.

That might seem like a “duh!” observation. However, since, as far as I know, few people are yet measuring actual instances of solar electricity production lost to snow cover, I see this as an interesting and important contribution to knowledge production and, hopefully, long-term change.

Since we now have neighbors who have a 5.1 kW solar system – ours is 5.59 kW – I can actually show, in a small, but also concrete instance, how lost solar electricity production is both very real here in Colorado, and how it starts to add up.