Snow and ice on your solar panels
Short answer
Leave it alone. Snow on your panels is normal in a New York winter, it clears itself faster than you'd think, and the amount of production you lose over a full year is small. The one thing that genuinely causes damage and injury is people trying to clear it.
If your app is showing zero production and your panels are under snow, nothing is broken. Covered panels can't make power, and your system will pick right back up as the snow slides off.
Please don't clear your panels yourself.
No ladders, no roof rakes, no shovels, no brooms, no hot water. Winter roofs are the most dangerous place on your property, snow rakes scratch the glass and can crack a panel or dislodge mounting hardware, and hot water on freezing glass can shatter it. Damage from clearing attempts is not covered by any warranty — ours or the manufacturer's. It is genuinely not worth it for a few days of production.
Why it clears on its own
Solar panels are dark, smooth glass mounted at an angle on a surface that's usually above freezing underneath. Once any sunlight reaches the glass — even weak winter sun, even through cloud — the panel warms slightly, the bottom layer of snow releases, and the whole sheet slides off in one go. It's usually a day or two after a storm, sometimes the same afternoon.
Panels also shed snow considerably better than the shingles around them. If you're looking at a roof where the array is clear and the rest is still white, that's the system doing exactly what it should.
What it actually costs you
Less than people assume. December and January are the shortest, weakest solar months of the year in our region — a system produces a small fraction of its annual total then regardless of snow. A few snowed-in days in the middle of that is a rounding error against a full year, and your system design already accounts for it.
If you're on net metering, this is also the time of year you're most likely to be drawing on credits you banked over the summer. That's the arrangement working as intended, not a sign of a problem.
When snow is worth telling us about
Most of the time you don't need to do anything. Get in touch if:
- Panels stay covered for more than about a week while nearby roofs have cleared — that can point to a shading or drainage issue worth a look.
- Snow or ice is sliding off in sheets over a doorway, walkway, or driveway. This is a real safety issue and there are things we can do about it, including snow guards. Tell us where it's landing.
- You can see damage — a panel that's visibly cracked, lifted, or out of line, or hardware hanging loose. Send a photo from the ground.
- Production doesn't come back after the panels are visibly clear and you've had a sunny day. That's a different problem — start with My system stopped reporting.
- Heavy icicles are forming at the roof edge below the array. Worth a conversation about ventilation and ice damming; that's usually a roof issue rather than a solar one, but we'd rather know.
If you have a battery
A snowed-in array can't recharge your battery. Through a long stretch of covered panels your battery will cycle on grid power instead, and if the grid goes down during that stretch you'll have less stored energy to work with than you'd have in summer. It's worth checking your reserve setting before a big storm rather than after — see Storm preparation for your battery system.
What about next winter? Snow guards.
We install snow guards, and they can be added to an existing array — you don't need a new system or a re-roof to get them. They don't stop the snow from clearing; they break it up so it comes off gradually instead of arriving all at once on whatever is below. If snow sliding onto a walkway, a doorway, or a driveway is a recurring problem at your house, that's the fix, and it's usually a straightforward job. Give us a call and we'll look at your layout and quote it.
Ready for us to take a look?
This is the fastest way to reach our service team. It goes straight into the queue with your system details attached, so nothing gets lost in a voicemail. You'll get a confirmation, and you can reply to it with photos or updates as things develop.
Include your Site ID if you have it. It lets us pull up your system and check your monitoring data before we get back to you, which often saves a visit entirely.
Prefer to talk it through? Call (518) 478-8365.
How soon will someone come out? When a visit is needed, we're typically scheduling about two weeks out. That's a typical case rather than a promise — how far you are from us, how full the schedule is that month, and whether a part has to come from Enphase or SolarEdge all move it. If something is urgent or unsafe, say so in your request and we'll treat it differently.
Last verified: August 2026