Understanding the sensitivity of PV snow loss modeling to snow slide coefficients in standard snow loss model over Michigan

As utility-scale photovoltaic systems increase in northern climates, understanding when and how snow slides from panels has become an active area of research producing many prediction models. One widely used snow shedding model requires a snow sliding coefficient that controls how much the snow slides down the panel in one timestep. The slide coefficient is determined based on the photovoltaic system mounting style – roof or ground mount. The roof-mount coefficient has been used as a standard input, as it had more validation when the model was developed. In this research, we performed a sensitivity analysis on the roof- and ground-mount snow slide coefficients using historical weather data and a simulated utility-scale solar site in Michigan to better understand the effect of the snow slide coefficient on the hourly and annual losses over a ten-year period.