I've been cleaning mine, knowing the risk vs reward is stupidly high. I might spend 2 hrs to gain $2.00 of electricity. But it drives me nutty when the sun is beaming and panels are covered. I keep trying to think of a scheme to automate cleaning them. Like plastic sun shade or something. Even when the sun is beaming in winter, it doesn't generate all that much. So it's silly to put too much into it. But I still do.
I had the stupid foam snow rake too. It is absolutely useless.
I modified a standard snow rake and mounted a brush along the scraper edge. The brush is made for the bottom of like an industrial door or something.
It works GREAT. The brush is the only thing that touches the glass. It rides right over the screws holding panels down. And when snow is thick the the normal snow rake hooks and pulls the bulk of the snow off.
But it's kind of hacked together. I used nylon screw to attached the brush. It's an early prototype
One thing I'd love to do is put metal flashing or something at the bottom of the panels on the roof out to the edge of the roof. Currently all asphalt shingles. The snow slides down the panels and then gets stuck their (naturally when melting or when manually cleaning). So the top row of panels are clean and the bottom are covered due to the traffic jam of snow piled up on the asphalt shingles.
I love comparing a few neighbors in what they do. One does nothing and I compare how mine is vs his 2 days later. Sometimes his is solid frozen and think yeah it was worth it. Other times, his is squeaky clean and I never should have bothered. Another neighbor cleans his due to peer pressure
I think he thinks he has to clean them because I always have. His faces the opposite direction so it's hard to compare results.
