Cali Kid Corals

Solar coming soon!

To follow up with what Jon said, flat roofs typically are low quality in general, constant money pits, where as a good shingled roof, well there's a reason many shingles give 30+ year warranties.

Lapsan: Updates?

Well I got a present today :D

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I really like the company though, the guys doing the install spent quite a bit of time planning everything out today, so they wouldn't do a half-assed job or have to re-do it later.
 
Alright, yesterday evening was really windy but the guys carrying the panels up one at a time to the roof (technically they're my panels, however the contract states they must install them, so if they drop its not my fault :D).

And they worked through the cold to get them up!

However due to fat firemen getting some silly law in place that there must be 36 inches of walkway room in case there is a fire and they need roof access ... at which point I say I don't care if they break panels if my house is on fire, and also most fricking doorways aren't 36 inches wide. Well the net result is that they had to be clustered into two groups, one is a double stack of 12 and a row of 4. I believe they're being hooked up in 8 + 8 strings such that 4 of the panels on the double stack "team up" with 4 on the other side...

The wiring isn't hooked up yet, but the electrician is coming today to get that all taken care of (hopefully, they called and said they were busy today and would get in later than normal).

Here's the double stack, good thing they aren't hooked up because I'd be pissed my first day of panels is a drizzly super cloudy morning :D
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My lonely group of 4 in the back (er front of the house) :( The upside is you can barely see them from the street so no one will climb my roof to steal them!
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However there were some issues, I brought this up with the guys putting them up yesterday (it was the end of a long day, so I understand if they were tired and not thinking clearly) and after talking for a few moments of him trying to convince me its ok, and me telling him it wasn't the same... there is slope to the east-west direction of the panels, which does concern me a bit. He said they leveled against the roofline which is fine, however since the roof is sloped, the panels slope in that direction as well. What this basically means is they cheat towards the morning sun a bit, and lose a tad of the evening sun, which could be fine as often that will be when the clouds roll in from the ocean. However what I'm most worried about is the difference in tilt from the row on the front of the house since its a much more aggressive tilt at the back, and that one string will only work as good as the worst panels. This might be a fraction of percentage difference in total power (which I don't mind too much), but they need to express this to me, rather than try to tell me they're all still in the same plane... don't f*ck with a physicist when it comes to these matters! :D
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If the first picture wasn't obvious enough you can see here the direction the moisture is trickling down.. i.e. its not straight. Ideally I'd like them to fix them to flat in the east-west direction, not sure its worth the effort though, but I will definitely let them know of my displeasure. Its funny too I happened to glance at the order/instruction form they left downstairs and comments about owner were "Nice guy - Detail oriented" I think that's code word for me being nice... but picky :D
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Great!
You should be making lots of power ..... next spring ;)
Makes me feel guilty for living in the nice sunny east bay, and not having panels.

Yep, pretty crooked. But as long as the mounts are flat with no torque on the panels, probably not an issue.
The thing is, once you see something that obvious, you have to really question the competency of the installers.
Reminds me of my sunroom install. One obvious problem, so I checked really carefully, and found a lot more small ones.
 
Yeah I'm not questioning the competency.. ok maybe I am a bit... I watched them level it, and they even told me they leveled it with the roof line which they acknowledged wasn't level, however they may have forgotten about the other set of panels and that it's not level with this set. I'm actually going to climb up and get some numbers just to see.
 
Alright checked all the angles, and while it might not have been perfectly accurate, I basically used a 4 foot level and tape measure with some trigonometry.

I found the small panel set is perfectly level east-west, with a 15.7° tilt, the larger panel set is a 2.7° tilt east to west and a 14.6° tilt front to back. I'll talk with them later today however to find out what their tolerances might be, it could be a perfectly acceptable tolerance, and I'm just being overly picky.
 
Wait, 14.6° - 15.7° tilt?
That seems pretty flat.
Last I heard, optimal for Summer at our latitude was around 12°, and winter was 63°
And with a fixed system, you really want to plan more for winter, since there is less light.
Of course, building/cost considerations are important, as is the seasonal weather.
Still, I am a bit surprised it is less than 30.

I assume the panels face true south. If not, that will lower your effective tilt as well.
 
Well it depends upon what you want your panels to do... ideally I'd like some sort of adjustable level that moves as the Sun moves.. since that's not feasible at this moment, its all about when you want to make most of your power. Now for me that's summer time, I think I'd fight too many cloudy days in winter, wet season, etc (although the summer this year wasn't particularly shiny on average either :D), not to mention if I ever decide to do a time of use rate schedule there is no "peak period" in the winter, only semi-peak.. meaning there is no chance to sell back power at insanely high prices during the winter, where as with summer there is.

So we opted for summer tilt, ideally they wanted to do 20°, but due to roof space issue, or more to the point shading due to various pipes sticking out of the roof, we had to cluster the panels like we did, the double stack allows us to get more horizontal space used, and 20° might have been too aggressive a pitch and left the panels being too high, and 63° would be insanely high, literally almost 9 feet high.

Bottom line it will still make power in the winter, maybe just a tad less.
 
Why not just get sun tracking panels installed? I mean come on you already spent $20k (without rebates) whats a few thousand more?
 
There ya go, I mean my my AC3 has that lunar moon light calendar or something, I don't really use that, I could just modify it to move a gear box :D However I'm more worried about the roof ripping off due to the new sail that's on the roof, so I don't need to have any more potential week spots!
 
Don't worry about the angle Mike.
It looks like a good install.
most of your power will be made within 2 hours of "high noon".
When the electrician leaves he is not allowed to turn on the system and leave it on until PG&E ch... Giants win! Woot!!!!!!!!
...changes the meter.
 
Yeah I figured on that whole changing the meter business... its ok, I'll have a Jacob's ladder on the roof or something to use up all that electricity :D
 
Woohoo its officially installed! At around 6:45pm tonight everything was hooked up, and I was making 50 watts! Ok that's not much, but considering it was almost 7pm, super thick and dense clouds, I'm surprised there was much going on at all!
 
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