New Roof with Solar Panels

[pjard]

I know this is a bit of a long shot but has anyone needed to remove and re-install solar panels in order to replace a roof? I need some help with a quote I've received. Thanks in advance.....

[NH.Solar]

If your roof is over 10-12 years old and shingled don't even think twice, re-shingled the plane on which the solar array is planned for. It may look just fine visually, but a south facing roof that has been baking in the UV rays of the sun will become brittle after ten years or so, and when the installer is working on it they will create micro fractures in the shingles. Once water works into those fractures and freezes the shingles will begin to break up.
The good aspects however are two-fold; the re-shingling of the array under the roof array will be eligible for the 30% ITC, and once an array is placed over shingles they stop aging forever.
Also be aware that you could be creating quite an imbalance in your home framing with a roof mounted solar array. The south side with the solar array will slide off snow almost instantly, whereas the other side will likely retain snow if shingled. By the end of the winter you may have a snow load of 80 pounds per square foot, whereas the solar array only adds about 2-3 pounds per square foot. Roof mounted solar arrays can be a really good thing, but you really need to consider everything entailed carefully

Do you have room for a small ground mount? If yes then in every way it is a better option. Roughly half of what NH Solar has installed in the past few years have been 15 module bifacial tilting ground mounts on a single 8" steel upright. They can produce as much as 9 mWh per year, have a huge winter advantage due to the nature of bifacial modules, and are suoper easy to live with because of the tilting aspect. The pivot point in the center of the array is about 9 feet off the ground, and when adjusted to the steep 50+ degree angle for winter snow slides off instanty. Conversely when adjusted to the 25 degree summer angle the is plenty of room to ride under it to trim around the pole and mow the lawn. The filtered light shade area underneath the array is also a really great spot for a couple of chairs or a picnic table.

Lastly, strongly consider adding battery backup to your new solar system. There are many, many advantages to this extra expense but let me just paint out one. Let's assume that the grid has been down for quite some time due to either a severe weather event or a hacker attack, at that time the only people that will have power at all are those with battery backed solar. After a few weeks without grid power those people with whole house generators will begin to run out of fuel, and guess what, the refueling trucks won't be running either. The folks that had installed solar will learn immediately that a simple solar array with no battery backup system must shut down anytime the grid is down to prevent backfeeding power into the lines as they are being repaired. A clinet however that has installed a battery backed up solar array however will have nearly infinent power. When the grid goes down a mechanism in the battery backup will sense the outage and "island" itself away from the grid but still stay alive and producing. That client could run out of power overnight, but once the sun arises the next morning the inverter will again wake up and begin to first power the home and then re-charge the battery bank. The power may to some degree be limited, but it is never ending. The only real problem may be... you are going to have a lot of family and friends if the grid goes down for very long

[NH.Solar]

ooh... by the way, if you are going ahead with removing an existing roof array be sure to check with your accountant about the ability to claim the ITC on your unfortunately needed re-shingling