Recommended height for solar panels
I am laying out a roof plan, looking at shading. I made a good scale drawing and now need to assume a mounting height in order to finalize the shaded no go areas. I suppose there are different opinion...
Forum Discussion
Snowman9000 wrote:
What I don't know for sure is how high the panels should be off the roof.
There is no precise answer to that. And, as people noted, your question is not quite clear.
If you mean shading on the flat panel - lift them as little as possible, and don't lift higher than needed to clear the obstacles under the panel like plumbing vents, luggage rails etc, and to clear most of the shade except for very early or late in the day when it doesn't matter.
If you mean the clearance under panel for heat dissipation purposes - I would say at least 3/4" from the frame bottom. Then there will be ~1.5" clearance from the actual PV panel because the frame bottom is lower than the back surface of the PV. 1"-2" from the frame bottom is the optimum range, IMO.
If you mean the height of the North side of tilted panel - then I don't know what to answer, there are too many variables.
