No solar for me

[Brian McGowan]

:sad:
Had a guy come out and survey my house for grid tied solar. He is part of the state's solar ethics board. He said he wouldn't put solar PV on my house because the trees behind my house are too close and I wouldn't get full yield all the time. Everything else was perfect. Roof angle was right for best yield where I am located and the house is pointed in mostly the right direction. He was highly impressed with everything else I was doing and passed my website along to his boss.
Kind of bummed though.
Brian

[Ralph Day]

Trees not yours to remove Brian?

Ralph

[Rob Beckers]

This is what we do in The Netherlands to keep trees in check:

http://www.natuur-natuurlijk.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/GROTE-KNOTWILG-00450-700x525.jpg

-RoB-

[Brian McGowan]

Unfortunately no they are not on my property. They are 70'+ tulip poplars and only 50 feet from the house. They are right next to the power lines and one of them actually leans towards my house in an effort to get out from under the canopy of the woods. I have permission to remove them but the cost would be in excess of $3K. I am not into paying to maintain someone else's property. The two trees that are closest to the house including the one that leans in my direction both have hollow rotten bases. This is mildly terrifying especially when the wind is coming out of the south. Mostly the wind comes out of the west or north west which would blow the trees back into the woods. Unfortunately that has not happened yet. Big branches have blown off of them from time to time but they just won't blow over.
Brian

[Andy Rhody]

Sounds like someday they'll need to come out of there anyway, Brian. Wished I lived a little closer. I have 2 chain saws.

This is the one I had to deal with. 78 feet tall 30 inches in diameter.

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e295/andy47bottles/Science/HPIM2045_zps92a5ce56.jpg (http://s41.photobucket.com/user/andy47bottles/media/Science/HPIM2045_zps92a5ce56.jpg.html)

With tree removed.

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e295/andy47bottles/Science/SANY0478_zpsa98ea545.jpg (http://s41.photobucket.com/user/andy47bottles/media/Science/SANY0478_zpsa98ea545.jpg.html)

[Brian McGowan]

I have had the electric company out here several times. They are not interested until the trees fall and take out the lines. I have neighbors that burn wood for heat and would happily take those trees out if they weren't 5 feet from the power lines and leaning towards my house. One of the trees had two stalks at one time and one of them finally leaned into the lines and was making a big scorch mark in the tree. They came and put a big rubber insulator on the line. Finally another tree behind a neighbor's house went down and took the lines and the pole behind my house out with it. I was able to convince them to take out that stalk but not the other by explaining they would have to move it to get the wire past it anyway so they might as well take it out now while the power was down. We were down for 5 days that time. We were 4 houses at the end of a line and there were 350,000 outages.

[Joe Blake]

Brian,

I have a vaguely similar problem. Across the road to the east is a fairly huge tree which from about April shades one of my sets of panels. The shading only lasts an hour or so, but check the house slightly to the north. If a storm blows from the south or west, that tree could crush almost the entire house if it fell.

http://i82.photobucket.com/albums/j245/saxeharp/general12/tree01_zpsf3vwjyra.jpg

Talk about the Sword of Damocles!:eek:

[Joe Blake]

Before I had my first set of panels installed, I had four different suppliers come round to give me a quote. Because of trees to my north (and the fact that my solar hot water system was already occupying the "prime" north face of the roof) one guy just got out of the car, said it wasn't worth it and drove off. That was in 2009. In 2015 I'm almost completely independent of the grid.

There's always hope. ;)

Joe

[Brian McGowan]

I am still wondering if it might be worth it to do it. My last bill which is usually the worst one of the year came in at 14.8kWh/day. The array I was thinking about would have been 2 rows of 9 x 220W panels to make the closest to 2 600V strings for almost 4kW of array. Would fit perfectly along the length of my roof. Even with shading for 5 months out of the year I still think I would cover my yearly bill. In summer I get real close to 9kWh/day and would probably get 5+ hours of unobstructed sun every day. That could mean 20+kWh/day when that happens. Even yesterday with shading I got 1.4kWh for the day and that includes 2 hours of absorbing which I don't need to do and 1 hour of floating which I also don't need. The way the charge controller makes absorbing and floating is to choke down the panels. I am sure I would have gotten more than 2kWh out of my 1050 watt array. And someday those trees have to fall over or break off enough for me to cut them down safely and then I am home free. I haven't gotten 5kWh/day out of my array yet but I got a bunch of 4.9s and I think that shows some good potential.