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> Not at all… > The sun isn't just going up and down you know it also circles from east to West… Over a narrow range in winter. You get good coverage from po

> Not at all… > The sun isn't just going up and down you know it also circles from east to West… Over a narrow range in winter. You get good coverage from pointing very south and avoiding shade. > I'm sorry but this is utter bullshit. The commercial plants do avoid shade as much as possible because shade destroy efficiency They do not avoid it "as much as possible". The panels are shading each other in that very photo, and that photo wasn't taken at the crack of dawn. It's basic trigonometry. Narrow spacing needs the sun to get pretty high before shading stops. A roof install never shades itself. The difference matters. > They don't care about shade when the sun is low because when the sun is low the incidence angle is terrible in the first place. Wrong answer. Those panels are plenty tilted for low incidence sunlight. The ones in front will make plenty of power in the winter. But the ones behind them won't. The limiter is the price of land. If land was free I guarantee they would spread them out more. And a home install doesn't have this specific issue. > Yes, but that's over-paneling… No it's not! If you need it for most of the year it's not "over"! > Sigh… Over-paneling 10x isn't going to be more worth it just because in spring and winter you need 5x. That's a nonsensical argument… If you need 5x or more for half the year, you calculated "x" wrong. Your math is what's nonsense here.

littlestymaar 7mo ago
> They do not avoid it "as much as possible". The panels are shading each other in that very photo You haven't linked the photo… > It's basic trigonometry. Narrow spacing needs the sun to get pretty high before shading stops. Of course it's “basic trigonometry”… It doesn't matter if the panels are shaded when the incidence angle is high anyway! > The limiter is the price of land. If land was free I guarantee they would spread them out more. They wouldn't, they'd just put more panels on a bigger surface. And again, industrial actors are maximizing the economic output they can make. Whatever decision you take at your level, it's going to be more expensive than what they are doing, and more efficient. > No it's not! If you need it for most of the year it's not "over" Yes it is… By definition you are over-paneling if your peak production is higher than what you use. This threshold is important because cost calculations only works when you haven't reached that yet! > If you need 5x or more for half the year, you calculated "x" wrong. Your math is what's nonsense here. X is the value for which the cost/MWh makes sense. The further you got from there, the bigger fraction of the power is unexploited and the higher the cost per unit of useful electricity rises. I didn't invent these concepts or these calculations, those are standards when talking about solar.
- Dylan16807 7mo ago
  > You haven't linked the photo… The one at the top of the article. > They wouldn't, they'd just put more panels on a bigger surface. Given a specific budget they can only buy so many panels. Free land would change the tradeoffs. > And again, industrial actors are maximizing the economic output they can make. Based on current costs. Change the costs and the methods change too. > Whatever decision you take at your level, it's going to be more expensive than what they are doing, and more efficient. No. I already have the land and the house. That means most efficient for me is different. I don't want to waste any more of our time arguing about how to define X so I'll skip the rest.
  - littlestymaar 7mo ago
    This makes no sense: solar plants in the deserts have the same shape yet even though the land is pretty much worseless. Where did you get your morning shade fixation from?
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      They don't build them in deserts that far north, do they? I got this "fixation" by doing the math to figure out why panels do so badly when there's still seven and a half hours of daylight. The insolation per square meter of ground is very low when the sun is near the horizon. But the insolation of a flat surface at 60 degrees of tilt is still pretty good. If you avoid shade. Please tell me you have no disagreements with that. It's basic math. So as you said with basic panels "one cell being shaded criples the output of the entire row". Normal commercial installs don't try to capture the morning sun. But in the middle of winter in Denmark the "morning" sun is basically all you have access to. You said "They don't care about shade when the sun is low because when the sun is low the incidence angle is terrible in the first place." If you tilt really far and avoid shade, you counteract the bad incidence angle. A single square meter of panel can absorb the light that would have hit 6 square meters of ground.
      - littlestymaar 7mo ago

littlestymaar 7mo ago

> They do not avoid it "as much as possible". The panels are shading each other in that very photo You haven't linked the photo… > It's basic trigonometry. Narrow spacing needs the sun to get pretty high before shading stops. Of course it's “basic trigonometry”… It doesn't matter if the panels are shaded when the incidence angle is high anyway! > The limiter is the price of land. If land was free I guarantee they would spread them out more. They wouldn't, they'd just put more panels on a bigger surface. And again, industrial actors are maximizing the economic output they can make. Whatever decision you take at your level, it's going to be more expensive than what they are doing, and more efficient. > No it's not! If you need it for most of the year it's not "over" Yes it is… By definition you are over-paneling if your peak production is higher than what you use. This threshold is important because cost calculations only works when you haven't reached that yet! > If you need 5x or more for half the year, you calculated "x" wrong. Your math is what's nonsense here. X is the value for which the cost/MWh makes sense. The further you got from there, the bigger fraction of the power is unexploited and the higher the cost per unit of useful electricity rises. I didn't invent these concepts or these calculations, those are standards when talking about solar.

Dylan16807 7mo ago
> You haven't linked the photo… The one at the top of the article. > They wouldn't, they'd just put more panels on a bigger surface. Given a specific budget they can only buy so many panels. Free land would change the tradeoffs. > And again, industrial actors are maximizing the economic output they can make. Based on current costs. Change the costs and the methods change too. > Whatever decision you take at your level, it's going to be more expensive than what they are doing, and more efficient. No. I already have the land and the house. That means most efficient for me is different. I don't want to waste any more of our time arguing about how to define X so I'll skip the rest.
- littlestymaar 7mo ago
  This makes no sense: solar plants in the deserts have the same shape yet even though the land is pretty much worseless. Where did you get your morning shade fixation from?
  - Dylan16807 7mo ago
    They don't build them in deserts that far north, do they? I got this "fixation" by doing the math to figure out why panels do so badly when there's still seven and a half hours of daylight. The insolation per square meter of ground is very low when the sun is near the horizon. But the insolation of a flat surface at 60 degrees of tilt is still pretty good. If you avoid shade. Please tell me you have no disagreements with that. It's basic math. So as you said with basic panels "one cell being shaded criples the output of the entire row". Normal commercial installs don't try to capture the morning sun. But in the middle of winter in Denmark the "morning" sun is basically all you have access to. You said "They don't care about shade when the sun is low because when the sun is low the incidence angle is terrible in the first place." If you tilt really far and avoid shade, you counteract the bad incidence angle. A single square meter of panel can absorb the light that would have hit 6 square meters of ground.
    - littlestymaar 7mo ago