Christmas Competition - Bad Installation - Spot the mistakes

[Ian-LS]

My colleague went to a site survey today and took a photo of an installation across the road. How mistakes can you spot?

Answers on a postcard

 

[WRDEnergy]

I am only seeing two possible but only possible mistakes.

1. the shading but they could have solar edge hooked up so it wouldn't matter.

2. The clamps could be in the wrong place... but some manufactures do allow you to clamp them at that end so once again maybe only possible mistakes.

In fact the only thing I can see wrong here is they own a camper van my eyes are not what they used to be though and the picture is taken from far away so prove me wrong !

 

[Ian-LS]

Well they neednt have put a panel near the chimney if they had moved the system nearer the gutter. That should have meant the panel would have fitted on an unshaded portion of the roof. Baring in mind the chimney is on the south end of the roof.

I actually could have picked a worse installation to be fair.

 

[WRDEnergy]

Yes it could be better... I assume its a 2kw system unless there is another 8 on the back but yes I would have made it line up to the top right rather than have it in between them for shading reasons.... solar edge do a 2200 inverter so it could still benefit having that top panel at certain times of the day but we get bigger shadows this time of the year anyway.

 

[Earthstore]

It looks like the panel on the far right is only clamped in the middle...

 

[Earthstore]

Actually it looks like it is cross railed, with no support at the end, hmmm...

 

[WRDEnergy]

you have better eyes than me... I cant see any of that I am assuming them dots at the bottom are the roof anchors lol

 

[Earthstore]

you have better eyes than me... I cant see any of that I am assuming them dots at the bottom are the roof anchors lol

Right click on pic, copy, then open when downloaded, then just press the + sign to blow up pic, my eyes are probably as bad as yours....

 

[Noshocks]

"My colleague went to a site survey today and took a photo of an installation across the road. How mistakes can you spot?"


Gas safe plumber doing a solar PV survey, now that would be a mistake ​

 

[WRDEnergy]

"My colleague went to a site survey today and took a photo of an installation across the road. How mistakes can you spot?"


Gas safe plumber doing a solar PV survey, now that would be a mistake ​

LOL now its so clear ! how did I miss that, I am going to put that in the staff news letter see if anyone sees it !

 

[Gavin A]

it'd probably help if Ian had explained that that install is south east facing, so that top panel will be shaded from mid morning all the way through the day all year, and most of the array will be shaded from around mid day onwards.

And yes the PV surveyor in this case is also a gas safe heating engineer who's also a trained solar PV surveyor who did 2-3 months shadowing us on surveys before we let him out by himself on the surveys, and he probably brings back the most detailed survey info of any of our staff. He also processes all the paperwork, does our wiring diagrams, user manuals etc. so he's a handy guy to have on the team even when we've not got much renewable heat stuff going on. Problem?

 

[Ian-LS]

It was just a bit of christmas fun. No need for point scoring against each other.

There arent that many mistakes on the installation front granted, the design however could be a lot better but i don't know what inverter was used but that top panel must be shaded for a vast proportion of the year and i'm convinced the panel could have been installed lower down the roof if the system were moved down the roof.

Oh and i shadowed my colleague for most of those site surveys and he is very thorough and knowledgable as a result.

 

[Somecamel]

I'm confused? Did you guys install this?

 

[Ian-LS]

No, it was an installation on a house across the road from the house we were surveying.

Next time, i'll put up a photo of a really bad installation instead......

 

[Gavin A]

I'm confused? Did you guys install this?

a potential customer live across the road from that installation, and was asking our surveyor if we'd have installed the system across the road or not because of the shading from the chimney which he didn't think was good for solar systems. Our surveyor said he didn't think we would have done as the shading from the chimney looked like it would be pretty bad , but took the photo because he wanted to us check if it was as bad for shading as he'd thought it would be, so we had a quick look on google earth, and it's pretty clear the shading is going to be terrible.

I don't generally think these sort of threads are a great thing for promoting solar PV generally, but we've just done a report for a customer of a now bankrupt firm who'd ignored a chimney in a similar situation to this, claimed no shading in the SAP calcs to justify charging through the nose for the system, and the system is actually now producing around 40% below the estimates and will probably not pay for itself as a result until around the 20th year if she's lucky. So if this and similar threads helps potential solar owners to ensure that shading is properly considered in their system design and installation then maybe it will do some good.