Spacing of solar panel systems
Last Post 29 Oct 2010 05:26 PM by jml. 2 Replies.
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gilbyUser is Offline
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27 Oct 2010 04:35 PM
I am going to put up solar panels on a pole. I plan on having the top most panel 16 feet off of the ground, the bottom will be roughly 4 feet after I set my latitude. My space is very limited. I want to put 3 rows of solar panels, each being 16 feet to the top of each system. I want to put space the rows North to South. How far apart will I have to space my systems so there is no shadowing?
Thanks
Eric AndersonUser is Offline
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28 Oct 2010 12:09 PM
First use this tool and figure out what the lowest sun angle is where you live.
 Use dec21 as the date and your lat/long for the lowest sun angle necessary
 http://susdesign.com/sunangle/
for where I live I use 24° From that data use Trigonometry to find the horizontal distance (think a right triangle).
 The tangent of the angle is equal to the opposite side (height) over the adjacent side (horizontal spacing)
 
tan (theta) = Height/ horizontal spacing or horizontal spacing = Height/ tan (theta)
Theta is the angle from sunfinder.
 
For me it would be 12/ tan (24) = 27 ft spacing

cheers
Eric
Think Energy CT, LLC Comprehensive Home Performance Energy Auditing
jmlUser is Offline
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29 Oct 2010 05:26 PM
Wattsun has a nice excel spreadsheet for figuring out this sort of spacing:
http://www.wattsun.com/spreadsheet/Wattsun_Tracker_Spacing.xls

and they also have links to other tools and reference info at the bottom of this page:
http://www.wattsun.com/reference.html

(I'm not affiliated with them in any way, and don't know much about their products - just that the spreadsheet seemed very handy)
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