On my drive to my shop a few days ago, I noticed a gravel pit had a new conex
container with solar panels on top.
It is oriented N-S. The container had 4 panels, probably 10’ x 8’ panels.
They were stuck up at a pretty steep angle, good for winter.
But think about it, a 40’ long container with 4 sets of 10’ tall (slant angle
distance) panels.
On the summer solstice, I drove by about noon, yep, just as I had bragged to my
wife, from South to North, only the Southern panel had full sun.
All the rest had at least a foot of shade at the bottom. She looked at me and
said: “but if they are in series that will kill the whole array won’t it?”!
Gotta love that woman.
I expect that noon, first day of winter, the Northern most 3 panels will
probably only have a couple feet of sun on them.
Folks, if you hate trig or geometry remember this rule of thumb: Make the
spacing North to South 3X the panel height.
In their case, they could only have had two of these arrays up there. One on
the far South and one on the far North if they wanted first day of winter full
sun.
Or, they could have simply dropped the container East to West and not had this
problem.
Resisting the urge to stop by and lecture them....
Pretty sure I will be successful in resisting that urge...
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