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Type Paper
Cite as Citation reference for the source document. R. Williams, D. Lizzadro-McPherson, J. Pearce, The Impact of Snow Losses on Solar Photovoltaic Systems in North America in the Future, Energy Advances 2, 1634-1649 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1039/D2YA00310D. print pdf Academia open access

Snow loss estimations of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in northern latitudes are important as project financing requires highly accurate energy generation estimates to provide long-term performance guarantees. As the climate changes, annual snowfall is changing. This study quantifies the losses to potential PV electricity generation due to snow, for all areas of Northern Western Hemisphere now and for 2040, 2080 and 2100 for climate change scenarios SSP126 and SSP585. Results show in 20 years even in the most optimistic SSP126 scenario many areas in the northern U.S. and southern Canada will be reduced below 5% snow losses. In the more pessimistic SSP585 scenario, heavy snow regions become nearly snowless. Overall, climate change is substantially reducing snow losses for PV systems over most of North America. As such the time dependent reduction in snow losses for a PV in northern latitudes should be included in modeling of the life cycle performance.

  • All data and free and open-source software used in the study can be acquired from https://osf.io/ndq8e/ under the GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0.

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Part of FAST Completed
Keywords photovoltaics, design optimization, snow, northern environments, array performance, photovoltaic systems, snow losses, solar photovoltaics, climate change, photovoltaic performance model
SDG SDG07 Affordable and clean energy, SDG09 Industry innovation and infrastructure, SDG13 Climate action
Authors Ryan Williams, Daniel Lizzadro-McPherson and User:J.M.Pearce
License CC-BY-SA-4.0
Organizations Free Appropriate Sustainable Technology, Western
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 15 pages link here
Impact 8 page views (more)
Created August 22, 2023 by Joshua M. Pearce
Last modified February 28, 2024 by Felipe Schenone
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