help with design

[grandfortune]

hi all, can anyone help me with a pv design, ive got pv-sol expert but cant for the life of me work it,i could forward the post code for steetview, the house has a massive tree in front of it but pvsol dosnt seem to have shading on it, i must be doing something wrong?

PM me if you can help

thanks
Grand

 

[SolarCity]

PS Sol doesn't have shading on it? Have you gone into the 3D mode?

 

[grandfortune]

yeah, ive put the tree in but doing it by memory really, i havent a clue what hieght the tree is, but when i put it in there seems to be no shading, but im sure there will be. oh well

 

[SolarCity]

Have you got the orientation right? Not a lot I can do to help really unless you know the height of the tree. It is difficult to get the right height of a tree on streetview.

 

[grandfortune]

postcode is SY36AN, ill try and attach a picture

- - - Updated - - -

its the middle house with the blue car

 

[SolarCity]

That's a big tree and it's on a bit of raised ground. I'd be amazed if it doesn't cause some significant shading. Is it far from your place? Is it worth going back to get an accurate measurement?

 

[grandfortune]

its only round the corner, for the life of me i cant begin to work out how to measure the tree, if you look north from the top of there drive its on the left hand end of the house so i assume it will only start to shade at about 7pm in the summer months but i am guessing as you can see ive taken the screen grab and im faced the compass at the top with north to the left so the house is south west facing so should only get the shading in the late afternoon,.

I was also going to get a dual tracker and put the left and right hand panels on different strings so as to give some panels a good half hour before it takes all the array down?.

ive made the tree quite tall in PV sol but it dosent seem to shade the house, i could never get the hang of that software gggrrrr.

cheers
Grand

 

[SolarCity]

If you have an iPhone or Android there are a couple of apps you can get to measure a tree - none of which seem that accurate to me. Alternatively you may want to get a Leica D8 - they're the mutts nuts.

From checking on Google maps, it looked like it would shade much earlier than 7pm but I may well be wrong.

Something you could try - make sure you have the tree located in the right position and then take a picture of the shade cast by the tree onto the roof at a certain time of the day. You can then go to PV Sol and adjust the height of the tree until it matches the photo you have taken at that specific time of the day.

 

[grandfortune]

you saying i can go to the specific day in PV sol and see the shading its producing, so say i do it today 6th Dec 2012, i can then see the shading affect in pvsol.??

thanks
for you help
Grand

 

[grandfortune]

just found the button, i dont know what time of year or date i had in when doing the 3d design ( i assume its the day you do it on the PC), but now i can choose the date and then run simulator, is there a way you can put this on disc so the customer can put it on his pc ans see or even email it, looks very good for sales point of view?.

cheers
grand

p.s i really should use this 1K software i bought lol

 

[TedM]

My rough estimate of the tree height would be 25 metres. But the top is cut off in the photo so could be a bit more.

The easiest way to estimate tree height is to allow 5m to a two-storey building roof gutter. Stand back and hold out your arm and size your fingers to that height against a building, then move your hand across to the tree and roughly count up in 5m steps from the ground.

The 'standard' way of estimating would be to walk toward/away from the tree until the top was at 45 degrees elevation from your viewpoint. Measure the distance from that point to the tree (pace it or using a tape) and that is how tall it is. If you want to be really accurate you'd add 1.5m to 2m to allow for the height of your eye above ground level.

 

[whinmoor]

Looks dangerous to me. Might topple over at any moment. Chainsaw job? mg_smile:

 

[Worcester]

Another way is a simple bit of trigonometry, measure the length of the shadow (on a sunnny day ) find / measure / look up the angle of incination of the sun at that time of day on that day, and then height = length of shadow x tan(angle of inclination)

 

[grandfortune]

havent said anything about the garage to the customer,but looking at the picture do you rekon putting some on the garage would be worth it, mind you he wants all black as he dosn;t like the look of them now so maybe he wont go for the garage.

cheers for the reply's guys
Grand

 

[Worcester]

Garage is an obviuos place - depends what size he wants / you can get on the main roof, also may be more suscepatble to shadow as it's lower.