I’d write the manufacturer about this and mention it. I’d agree that the end user should at least be notified of these potential problems as installers typically won’t come back and check on their work once it’s all said and done.
Yeah, I’d expect that to be a notice in whatever messages/warnings on the normal user side of things.
Otherwise, nice to know it appears to work well and tells you specifics of which string/line it’s on!
Hrm. Would the power production be worth water-cooling the panel in more extreme heat?
Almost certainly not. This is where the whole “Just stick a bunch of panels up and ignore them” approach works well, and I’m still generating more than we use on a daily basis by a good margin.
The costs, financial, material, and complexity, just aren’t worth it to gain an extra 10kWh/day or so. I’d use a good fraction of that pumping the water around.
If you happened to have a spot that could do a decent gravity flow, as in a creek with water above by a dozen feet or so, could you see yourself doing something like that? Building a small pond/container and using gravity flow with some small heat dispersion along the back/frames of the panels? Or is that simply a lot more work/cost/effort than it’s worth unless you just happen to find all the equipment going for super cheap?
No.
I’ve no shortage of massive earthmoving projects far more interesting. 
Pretty much that. By the time you go about putting heatsinks or something on the back, routing water, etc, you’d have been far cheaper to just add more panels.
About the only place water cooling solar makes sense is concentrated PV solar, but I’m not sure that’s much of a thing anymore - you put 10x or 100x illumination on a small panel and cool it so it doesn’t melt, but it only works in clear skies.
As a general rule of thumb, any time you start thinking “Oh, I could have solar panels AND…” - you’re in for disappointment. They are best left as solar panels, in the sun, producing power and, perhaps, some shade. They make terrible roads, and reasonably terrible water heaters, too. By the time the water is hot enough to be useful, the panels are too hot. And if you get smart and put a heat pump on the loop so you can pull heat from the water at a lower temperature, you have to be careful that you don’t drop your panels below the dew point and condense a ton of water on them (or, worse, freeze it).
And once you’ve done any of that clever stuff, you’ve spent far more than you would have just adding some panels or adding efficiency somewhere else.
I don’t know where my panels run in the heat, but if I give them 140F in the sun, and water temperatures are 70F, that’s a drop from 60C to 21C, or a 40C drop. With a temperature pmax coefficient of -0.39 %/°C, that’s about 15% delta in production for an awful lot of cost.
Kinda figured, even with close to “free”, doesn’t work as well as most folks would like to think it would be. Assuming you even can get enough of a gravity feed, which in general is probably never going to be the case. At least not for any kind of home owner, and even perfect siting for commercial scale, it’s not worth the attempt.
There are a lot of engineering situations where someone unfamiliar with the field has the obvious, “Hey, why not combine X and Y?” sort of insight that isn’t being done by those in the field who are familiar with the various tradeoffs. On some rare occasions, you end up with something novel. Most of the time, it’s not done because if you combine A and B, you end up spending more money than doing A & B separately, with a system that’s far worse at A or B than either one is alone.
I’ll point to Solar Roadways as this sort of “synergy” where you end up spending an absolute metric crapton of money for terrible roads, terrible solar panels, and the promise of even more terrible ideas (“melting snow” with heaters being such an idea). Yes. Technically speaking, you can combine “solar” and “roads” and get something that’s… handwavingly able to be both. It’s just not a solution anyone sane would pick.
That said, cooler panels are certainly better than hotter panels in terms of production, and I’m quite happy with how my panels cool. My peak production, 100kWh days, were on windy spring days when the air was clear and there was enough wind to keep the panels at ambient temperature. The same conditions with calm winds were about 5kWh lower.
I would be interested in seeing what the difference between vertical and horizontal rails on a roof mount system work out to, though. The normal horizontal rails block convection airflow substantially, whereas vertical rails, especially on a metal roof, should allow for some rather stronger convection flows. I’d wager that if you had a white metal roof, bifacial panels with vertical rails and a 4-6" gap between the panels and roof would be the optimum for production.
How much more likely would wind damage due to high winds be with vertical rails instead of horizontal rails? I have no idea, but if it made any difference at all it’s likely the best choice is again to keep things simple and reliable instead of chase efficiency.
As long as you meet the span guidelines and panel mounting guidelines, it shouldn’t matter.
That makes sense, the panels are still being held at the same points on the frame and the fasteners are still the same distance apart.
Yeah, unless stuff is literally starting to come apart, as long as you meet the distance requirements and such, I can’t see any reason there would be a difference. You’re a bit more limited, depending on your joist spacing and panels, but you could certainly make it work.
We’ve passed 2MWh back past net zero with plenty of time left until winter, though daily production is a good bit lower now with all the smoke and some clouds - 70kWh/day or so. Spring is definitely peak production time, though fall should bring some good numbers too as it clears up and cools down.
If it was some kind of novel thin film with low efficiency but cheap cost per m2 (aka fancy spray paint) you could spray on top an existing road surface, that’s one thing.
Ruggedized panels you walk/drive on? Hard pass.
Bleh. Smoke/clouds/overcast. 
Like, sub-30kWh today.
Hrm. West inverter is grumbling about string A again, checked my connections at the disconnect box, nothing weird there. Guess I’ll check the terminal block at the inverter. They’re spring loaded weirdness.