A functional solar panel design and installation depends primarily on two factors:

Solar Insolation: How much sun hits the solar panels and how ‘intense’ is the sunshine?
Solar Shading: Conversely, when obstructions such as trees block sunshine, they cast shade.  Knowing the locations, times and durations of panel shading is important. As one might expect, shading reduces the effectiveness of a panel layout. But even worse, 'one bad panel can spoil the lot,' meaning a single shaded panel can effectively disable a group of panels, depending on how they’re wired together. 

In short, measuring solar shading and insolation is critical to achieving  a good design and installation. And precigeoSolar offers a unique and mathematically grounded approach to measuring solar insolation and shading without the complications of a site visit.

How we do it

Measuring shade and solar insolation involves modeling. We model the sun (its path through the sky, the light, the seasonal changes). We model the roof (where the panels are placed). And we model the obstructions that block the sun (e.g. chimneys, trees). 

The animation below illustrates the precigeoSolar analysis. A 3D model of the roof and relevant roof obstructions (e.g. on-roof obstructions such as chimneys and off-roof obstructions such as trees) is built by precigeo operators using proprietary tools, along with overhead and perspective aerial imagery. This model is then ‘fed’ into a precigeo-proprietary solar modeler along with a specification of dates and times to be analyzed.  Yearly averages are computed by sampling various days at specified times over the course of all 12 months. 

In this example, we give some intuition behind the analysis. In this case, we calculate solar shading and insolation at five times on June 12 during the day (8AM, 10AM, 12PM, 3PM, 7PM). The resulting shading and insolation data (presented in visual form via a color map) is then averaged and presented as a daily average. 

Outputs can be provided in both visual map formats (color-coded diagrams of how much sun/shade falls on the roof) and tabular formats (excel-like layout showing percentage of available sun striking the roof at specified locations and specified times throughout the day).