[_Microft]

Not at all. Afaik you won‘t even need wires for that. You can occasionally feed energy into the panels which produces a bit of heat there. It wouldn’t even have to melt (a lot) of snow - just enough that the bulk of it slides off.

[usrusr]

That snow will then still be on the warehouse roof though.

But I wonder if some "maintenance bot" could eventually become established that's designed around the benefits of the regular grid structure. Perhaps "walking" from socket to socket like a gravity-well capable descendant of Canadarm? Wouldn't start as snowplows, but for maintenance tasks at lower frequency, large solar parks could even make very expensive units worthwhile, and from there the magic of mass market might bring prices down sufficiently far.

[LgWoodenBadger]

Slide off the solar-panels-on-the-flat-roof onto the flat-roof itself?

[_Microft]

Good point, I had regular roofs in mind because that‘s the context in which I discussed that before.

[dzhiurgis]

Panels are typically installed at an angle