3 ms·

Hey thanks! The trouble with the origami racking approach is that the engineering decisions you make to build a portable, foldable racking system go in some dif

Hey thanks! The trouble with the origami racking approach is that the engineering decisions you make to build a portable, foldable racking system go in some different directions from what makes the best hardware for long-term, large-scale installations. A couple of ways this shows up: 1. making your system rugged to handle extreme weather. These sites need to last 30-40 years without breaking, which pushes you to use pretty heavy + large components. Piles get driven several feet into the ground, so even with unfolding systems you're still probably pile driving. 2. tracking -- adding the complexity to enable rows to rotate to face the sun makes it harder to make the system portable. Basically all large-scale solar getting built is single-axis tracked. 3. module cleaning -- it's important that vehicles can traverse rows to clean dirt off of modules on a regular basis. Having structure that connects the rows together may make this more difficult. None of these are intractable on their own but together they make the approach you describe very difficult.

ericd 2y ago
Thanks for going through that! We used aerocompact, with 18” ground screws/anchors (a lot of them), and their engineering plans for our anticipated wind load didn’t even require all possible ground screw spots to be filled, so it seems like piles might not be strictly necessary? With panels getting so much cheaper, is tracking necessary still? Maybe if land is at a premium, but I know the aerocompact commercial deployments don’t support tracking.
- justicz 2y ago
  Fascinating! My initial thought is that this is going to be very soil dependent. Is this the system you were using? Was it ballasted? https://www.aerocompact.com/en-us/products/ground-mount https://www.aerocompact.com/en-us/products/ground-mount
  - ericd 2y ago
    Yeah, we used the g20 south-facing ground mount, no ballast, about 40 18” ground screws for a 48 panel array (relatively small 108 cell panels). Soil is clay, for reference, not very rocky, so might be unusually well suited for the screws. Easy to drive with a socket wrench or impact wrench, 1” heads.
mxfh 2y ago
30+ years sounds excessive for managed installations (anything thats not just sitting inaccessibly on a roof with prohibitively expensive access costs), would think max 10-20 years, if you have the option to upgrade some higher efficiency panels for maintaining best ROI given current trends continue and land being a cost factor in most regions.

ericd 2y ago

Thanks for going through that! We used aerocompact, with 18” ground screws/anchors (a lot of them), and their engineering plans for our anticipated wind load didn’t even require all possible ground screw spots to be filled, so it seems like piles might not be strictly necessary? With panels getting so much cheaper, is tracking necessary still? Maybe if land is at a premium, but I know the aerocompact commercial deployments don’t support tracking.

justicz 2y ago
Fascinating! My initial thought is that this is going to be very soil dependent. Is this the system you were using? Was it ballasted? https://www.aerocompact.com/en-us/products/ground-mount https://www.aerocompact.com/en-us/products/ground-mount
- ericd 2y ago
  Yeah, we used the g20 south-facing ground mount, no ballast, about 40 18” ground screws for a 48 panel array (relatively small 108 cell panels). Soil is clay, for reference, not very rocky, so might be unusually well suited for the screws. Easy to drive with a socket wrench or impact wrench, 1” heads.

mxfh 2y ago

30+ years sounds excessive for managed installations (anything thats not just sitting inaccessibly on a roof with prohibitively expensive access costs), would think max 10-20 years, if you have the option to upgrade some higher efficiency panels for maintaining best ROI given current trends continue and land being a cost factor in most regions.