Comments on: Solar Panels Suitability Checker — iPhone/iPod/iPad App (Free)

By: Community-Owned Solar / Solar Gardens for 4/5 of Americans? | Patriot Roofing and Solar | San Diego Roofing Experts | Solar Installation San Diego

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 13:41:03 +0000

[…] comments Not everyone owns a house. And not every house is suitable for solar. In fact, 4/5 American homes aren’t suitable for solar! So, how do we get everyone on the […]

By: Community-Owned Solar / Solar Gardens for 4/5 of Americans? - CleanTechnica

Community-Owned Solar / Solar Gardens for 4/5 of Americans? - CleanTechnica — Fri, 06 Jul 2012 09:33:18 +0000

[…] Shahan Leave a Comment SharePin It Not everyone owns a house. And not every house is suitable for solar. In fact, 4/5 American homes aren’t suitable for solar! So, how do we get everyone on the […]

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Nice stuff. Definitely some fun projects!

If you have any interest, happy to have you post some guest posts on these possibilities. Let me know. Email: zach@importantmedia.org

By: Zachary Shahan

Zachary Shahan — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:33:00 +0000

Nice!

By: Bob_Wallace

Bob_Wallace — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 16:08:00 +0000

How are your panels wired? Are you using on-panel inverters, separate inverters for the 80 and 20?

By: Sirsparks Eletrical

Sirsparks Eletrical — Wed, 04 Jul 2012 12:26:00 +0000

I have 80% of my PV in the “excellent” position and 20% in the “OK” (270 degrees) position. This is actually an advantage to me because during the best part of the day 80% is all I need and then the remaining 20% produce “full” power from about 2pm and continue producing significant power 2 hours longer than the 80% panels. The reason for this is simple; in later afternoon the sun is close to West not South. Mine are set at 50 degrees for optimum later sun efficiency.

By: GaryBIS

GaryBIS — Tue, 03 Jul 2012 19:58:00 +0000

Free is good, but it looks a bit minimal. It looks like about all it does is tell you that roof surfaces that point near south are better?

Seems like not taking into account possible shading could be a big problem.

I suppose I’m a bit prejudiced (because its mine), but I like this hand method: http://www.builditsolar.com/SiteSurvey/site_survey.htm On the down side, it takes about an hour. But, on the up side its a fun family activity, and anyone doing it learns quite a bit about the motion of the sun through the seasons and how that effect solar gain and how it impacts shading — something EVERYONE should know

Its also fairly easy to do a rough model of your house and potential shading objects in Google SketchUp. SketchUp has a built in sun and does a really nice job of showing shading patterns — a simple example: http://www.builditsolar.com/References/SketchUp/SketchUpEx.htm

Bright Harvest offers a really nice analysis from satellite pictures that does an good job with shading analysis and all the rest. Its kind of pricey, but when you are going to spend many thousands of dollars on a solar array, it probably makes sense to spend a hundred on knowing whether its going to work and how much energy its going to produce. I used it on my house and and it found some things I never thought about: http://www.builditsolar.com/References/BrightHarvest/BrightHarvest.htm

Once you have a location without shading issues, just running PVWatts from NREL is very easy and gives a very good estimate of montly and yearly power output. Also easy to use it to do tilt and azimuth studies, and/or tracked vs not tracked PV panels.

Appreciate the work you guys do on a day in and day out basis — thanks!

Gary