It was quickly apparent that the wall installation was the correct choice for reducing the hospital’s energy needs.Īerial view photo on right courtesy of Nearmap. an estimated 33.9 MWh for the wall-mounted array. Even given the orientation of a wall-mounted array, this rooftop would only make around 12.1 MWh per year, vs. Taking the space that was available, there was only enough room for an 11.8-kWdc installation, with significant shading losses. The complexity of the rooftop provides very little space to fit modules. the output of a fixed-tilt array on this specific roof. The first comparison we wanted to make was the output of the wall-mounted array vs. So Folsom Labs decided to run a few tests to see how walls compare to roofs for solar panel installation. A wall-mounted array may not be the first choice, but when a roof is almost completely obstructed, it may be a decent option. High-quality roofs for installation are becoming difficult to come by.
This unique array made us wonder when vertical installations can make sense. The hospital’s limited roof space made a traditional rooftop array impractical, but at four stories high, there was ample room on the south side of the building. In one instance that caught our eyes, New York installer Quixotic Systems built a 37-kW array on the side of Urban Health Plan’s Simpson Pavilion. Installing solar on the side of a building is rarely the first choice for solar developers, but sometimes the customer prefers a wall-mounted array.