Our electrician stopped by to do what is called a solar site shade analysis. He used a solar pathfinder, which tells you how much, if any, shade will impact your solar panels. It is pretty exact — its panoramic site reflector provides a full year’s worth of solar potential for the site. It is also very low-tech, as the image shows (taken from www.solarpathfinder.com). There are no moving parts and no electricity required to perform this analysis.
Our site is almost perfect — there is just a slight shading in the late afternoon in the middle of the winter. This is particularly important for a standard photovoltaic panel. If shade covers just part of a panel, I am told, the entire panel will not produce any power. However, with TenK Solar, the new company based in Bloomington, Minnesota, apparently that is not the case. The shaded are will only limit the production of electricity to the extent of the shade. That is, if 25% of the panel is in the shade, only 25% of the panel will not perform, as opposed to 100%.
We have a flat roof, and there are very few trees nearthe south side of our roof. If you look at this photo, you can see the reflection of me and the electrician. You can also see the reflection of the few trees on the other side of our lot, barely impacting us. This is good news — I would never cut down a tree to make solar panels work better!
Now we just need to wait for TenK Solar to become UL listed and for our installer to become NABCEP Certified and for the State of Minnesota to approve our rebate request!