[RE-wrenches] Successor to SunEye 210?

August Goers august at luminalt.com
Tue Mar 8 09:24:08 PST 2016


All –



We still have several SunEyes and make it standard procedure to take shots
on every roof. However, our sales reps have been using Solar Census with
mostly good results:



http://www.solarcensus.com/about/



I have not tried Aurora solar but my experience after running hundreds of
Solar Census sites in the Bay Area is that it is quite accurate compared to
SunEye shots. Solar Census has a limited geographic area of coverage, so
watch out for that. We have noticed discrepancies for steep non-optimal
orientations (for example 45 deg pitch facing 80 deg East) where Solar
Census reports less solar access than our comparable SunEye shots. I don’t
yet know which is more accurate.



Best,



August





*From:* RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] *On
Behalf Of *Andrew Truitt
*Sent:* Monday, March 07, 2016 4:15 PM
*To:* RE-wrenches
*Subject:* Re: [RE-wrenches] Successor to SunEye 210?





William - I agree that the condition of the roof and electrical service
should be inspected before installation, but for some installers its
helpful to have an accurate shade analysis prior to visiting the site.  I
don't think the use of a cost-effective technology implies that the
installer is cheap or unwilling to do the diligence required for proper
system design.  And if a company has entry level installers leading jobs I
think they likely have bigger issues on their hands.







For a brighter energy future,


Andrew Truitt

Principal
Truitt Renewable Energy Consulting, LLC

(202) 486-7507

LinkedIn Profile <https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewtruitt>

Company Website <http://truittreconsulting.weebly.com/>

NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional ID: 032407-66

Colorado Journeyman Electrician License No.: 600132

[image: 24 copy.jpg]

"Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion
to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor
safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could
ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!"

~William McDonough















On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 3:58 PM, William Miller <william at millersolar.com>
wrote:

Wrenches:



This approach is emblematic of the cheapening of the solar industry.  If a
contractor cannot be bothered to get on a roof to provide an accurate
assessment of the site, I wonder if they will be honest if it turns out
there are shading or other issues not anticipated?  The entry level
installer will never notice shading problems.  If there are undocumented
shading issues, the consumer may never know they are being cheated out of
some of the return on their investment.



This is true also about the condition of the roof and electrical
infrastructure.  We have seen the contracts offered by some of our
competition.  They get the job by low-balling estimates and then make up
the difference by contract “adders.”



I believe that at some point a competent professional needs to get out of
the office and in the field to evaluate each and every job before the
contract is offered or the customer suffers.  I caution consumers:  if no
one looked carefully at your roof and your electrical then you are not
dealing with a reputable contractor.



William Miller



PS:  The Pathfinder is still a reliable, accurate alternative.  If you
apply the values on the chart to a model adjusted for pitch, azimuth and
local insolation you can get very accurate values for shading.  Those who
can create a spreadsheet tool will find the results can be tabulated in
short order.



Wm



[image: Gradient Cap_mini]
Lic 773985
millersolar.com <http://www.millersolar.com/>
805-438-5600



*From:* RE-wrenches [mailto:re-wrenches-bounces at lists.re-wrenches.org] *On
Behalf Of *Andrew Truitt
*Sent:* Monday, March 07, 2016 12:30 PM
*To:* RE-wrenches
*Subject:* Re: [RE-wrenches] Successor to SunEye 210?





I think the fact that no manufacturer has jumped in to fill the void left
by the SunEye is an indicator that remote shade analysis tools like Aurora
(my favorite) are the likely path forward for the industry.  These tools
can typically make it possible to generate a full rendering and shade
analysis in less than 15 minutes for the experienced user, without ever
having to get on a roof.  NREL did some validation studies (here's Aurora's
<http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy16osti/65558.pdf>) and found a few tools to
produce results as good or better than the SunEye, which makes sense to me
since the analysis is based on an integral over the whole roof surface as
opposed to a few point measurements.  Of course the "garbage in, garbage
out" principle is very applicable.









For a brighter energy future,


Andrew Truitt

Principal
Truitt Renewable Energy Consulting, LLC

(202) 486-7507

LinkedIn Profile <https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewtruitt>

Company Website <http://truittreconsulting.weebly.com/>

NABCEP Certified PV Installation Professional ID: 032407-66

Colorado Journeyman Electrician License No.: 600132

[image: 24 copy.jpg]

"Don't get me wrong: I love nuclear energy! It's just that I prefer fusion
to fission. And it just so happens that there's an enormous fusion reactor
safely banked a few million miles from us. It delivers more than we could
ever use in just about 8 minutes. And it's wireless!"

~William McDonough















On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 12:56 PM, Dan Fink <danbob88 at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Peter;

My understanding is that the only thing left of Solmetric at Vivint is the
PV Analyzer, and though they stated a year ago that they were going to
"streamline" the PV sales process so that the site survey could be
accomplished on the same day as the sale, I've seen nothing else from them.

Very happy that I've kept the heavily-modded Solar Pathfinder that I bought
in 1994, with a real tripod adaptor.

For quicky site surveys and semi-interested customers, I use an Android
smartphone app, which is pretty accurate IF you build a tripod adaptor for
the phone.

I'm surprised someone hasn't leapt in to claim this market share. Not all
of us are big-city no-battery PV installers who can use the new Google tool
that  estimates tree heights. My class experiments with this were a
bust....it only sorta kinda works.

Ground truth is the only thing I trust. Maybe I should just start building
and marketing my Pathfinder and smartphone tripod adaptors.




Dan Fink

Adjunct Professor, Ecotech Institute

IREC Certified Instructor™ for:

~ PV Installation Professional

~ Small Wind Installer

Executive Director, Buckville Energy

NABCEP Accredited Continuing Education Providers™
970.672.4342






On Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 10:27 AM, Peter Parrish <
peter.parrish at calsolareng.com> wrote:

Can’t seem to find a SunEye product on the Solmetric website. Is it tucked
away on the Vivent site or somewhere else hard-to-find?



Peter T. Parrish, Ph.D.

President, SolarGnosis

1107 Fair Oaks Ave.

Suite 351

South Pasadena, CA 91030

(323) 839-6108

petertor at pobox.com



_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance

List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org

Change listserver email address & settings:
http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org

List-Archive:
http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html

List rules & etiquette:
www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm

Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org




_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance

List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org

Change listserver email address & settings:
http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org

List-Archive:
http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html

List rules & etiquette:
www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm

Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org




_______________________________________________
List sponsored by Redwood Alliance

List Address: RE-wrenches at lists.re-wrenches.org

Change listserver email address & settings:
http://lists.re-wrenches.org/options.cgi/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org

List-Archive:
http://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/maillist.html

List rules & etiquette:
www.re-wrenches.org/etiquette.htm

Check out or update participant bios:
www.members.re-wrenches.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20160308/b7da9ad5/attachment-0002.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 5238 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20160308/b7da9ad5/attachment-0012.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1460 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20160308/b7da9ad5/attachment-0013.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 5141 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.re-wrenches.org/pipermail/re-wrenches-re-wrenches.org/attachments/20160308/b7da9ad5/attachment-0014.jpg>


More information about the RE-wrenches mailing list