Snow Day: How much does snow affect solar production?

Panels covered in snow

Panels covered in snow

It snowed yesterday (Jan 19th, 2025) and left a nice layer of snow on the solar panels, so I figured this was a good time to see how snow on the panels affects production. As you might expect, it affects it quite a bit!

Here’s a chart of solar production from last week, on Jan 14 2025:

Here’s the chart from today so far:

As you can see, last week it peaked at about 5500 Watts and today it peaked around 280 Watts - almost a 95% decrease. Kind of a bummer - I hoped enough light would make it through the 1-2 inches of snow to generate more than this but it looks like I was wrong. It’s supposed to remain cold (currently 25ºF here) for the next few days so I guess there’s not much I can do other than hope the snow slides off.