solar shading app

[DC1]

Have any of you used the Solar Shades app be Comoving Magnetics? I had a plan to place my 10ft from the pro[erty line 8.4 system but the planning dept said I have to move it 10ft further south because of property setback rules. That moves the system closer to the oak trees and brings shading issues into play. So I bought this app to see what my losses of sun would be. in the present location it shows a 33% loss of the sun. If I move to another part of the property and take a good size oak down ( would have to convince the other half that this is best thing to do) the sun loss drops to 25% Any body use this? - is it accurate?- will it be worth it to still put in a system??
Thanks for any help

[Ryan Bale]

Pretty cool. Pls write review after done.

[foo1bar]

I used it. Mostly to get some documentation for the POCO rebate. For my phone it was very difficult to get a good output. As I did the horizon it would jitter a lot. So as I was turning clockwise to get the horizon it'd suddenly think I was turning counter-clockwise and stop collecting the horizon. I suspect it is mostly my phone's fault (Sony LT30a)

[DC1]

foo1bar, have you been able to delete old jobs ? Because I had to change my location for the array I have a lot of worthless info on there I want to delete but can't figure out how to do it. I have left 2 emails with Comoving but no response!!!

[cebury]

I used it and it was a pain for rooftop mapping of horizon. you need to map from the expected installed location, going from 2 feet off the roof, like while laying down, changed the values significantly.

To delete, goto Existing Jobs, highlight and Hold. a little menu pops up to delete.

[DC1]

cebury, thanks for the info on deleting. Do you think the charts that Solar Shading gives you are close to accurate?

[cebury]

It was meant to be ballpark. Just as PVWatts is meant to be. It's funny, for being somewhat scienctific tools (not just this one, others too) they provide info that is largely common sense once you know how the sun arcs thru the sky in your area. The statistics for shading, like I said before, we're greatly influenced by even 1 foot difference in vertical location (which makes sense how shading works). Also, i installed two rows of 14 panels south facing, which meant some trees blocked some panels early in the seqson, but only the first few as the sun rose higher into the air.

The thing to remember is this: Tools that appear to give you exact percentages of reduction in output, are limited in their calculation by user input, the nature of shading, and the nature of how panels work with insolation, etc. It's ALL ballpark. A Solar Production estimate using Precise values is the temptress to techo/nerds/retentives. I am prone also. But that is from inexperience; after the first month of monitoring and seeing wattage/kwh graphs going up and down evry second, you'll understand.

I believe the old CA CSI rebate program required shading percentages by month, which might have driven the need for precision results -- gotta have something to write in the box.

Don't sweat it, most installers don't either. That's why large kwh variances exist between installer proposals. My installer hit it, "these east most panels will get a littlr hade in winter, that one west most panel will get some afternoon during summer." Of couree, my next question is exactly how much? I want to know how many panels to buy. His answer was right, "not much". A little, some, not much are adequate descriptions for most installs.