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Post your Ground Mount Setup

My plan to expand the ground mount in 2024 has come to a halt.
Looks like I will be waiting for shipping rates to come down (nice dreams...)
Almost $1k to deliver 8 Aluminum rails.......
Screen Shot 2023-12-16 at 16.23.55.png
 
Haunt eBay.
I found a pile of Unirac Solarmount light rails. Drove to San Diego (7 hours or so) and carried them home.

Unless you can do something else economically. Unistrut? Are those available locally in 20' lengths?
 
B-Mod said:
Just for reference, my Sinclair is at 62 degrees for winter, one end of my array is 24" above grade, and the other end is 32" above grade. This is perfectly stable. I do have a heavy wooded area right behind this array to help with wind if that matters.
Click to expand...
Cemented in poles or driven?

I will only cement poles in here with minimum 6.5 feet deep. I can bore a 30" hole about 10 feet down if a I add the second extension but gets tricky getting the auger back out of the hole. I can always get the backhoe out and dig with it, 14.5 foot reach. Prefer boring, way faster, less mess.

I offered to pour footing above ground if necessary. Kyle didn't think it would pass engineering (I don't need any permit here). None of it makes sense, looking at the photo above it has to be over 3 feet when at full 60 degree tilt on the tall end. My areas are level, no cross slope.

My MT Solar mount sits with 5 feet above grade at full tilt. It is much taller too. In really high winds, it will wiggle. Some of it is the collar around the pipe. Some of it is the play in the adjuster. Some of it is just flex of the pipe combined with push laterally against the ground. I do have a shed offside to the north and another south of it but offset. The south wind can run straight up along the building and hit the array. But there are some windbreaks to the south (trees and another short building).

I want to break the 30 panels up into 12X and 18X. The 18X will be exposed to a north wind and on the other side of the back shed. The 12X will be exposed to the south, fields and the highway. It was the location originally chosen for the house but I did find one better and installed the MT Solar mount there. I have trees down the west side of the property for the back 75%. Won't get much sun in the late afternoon on the 18X. The 12X will suffer some early shadows in winter due to a slight grade and trees across the road.

I would think breaking the array up plus cemented in poles this should be a no brainer but I don't know how heavy their poles are. Sinclair is my choice, they are 7 hours away so I can pickup instead of shipping. I always liked their design and it was my second choice for any mount. MT Solar raised prices quite substantially since my last purchase. The 18 panel array mount from MT Solar was about 120% higher without shipping than the 16 panel mount with shipping cost me.

Here is my acreage, red rectangle is MT Solar mount. Purple rectangles are proposed sites, purple array behind shop will be for the shop, other array will go to house. This photo from Google is very old, the dirt graded by the back shed on the side has to be 12 years ago. Most of the trees east of the house are gone, I only have 2 left and the rest belong to my neighbor. The trees north of the house will be gone next summer, I just ran out of room to put all the wood out back. The trees west and east of the shop are gone and even the shed by the house is gone. No, I'm not doing roof top, the sheds have 18 foot sidewalls. North is right hand side of photo.

Acreage 2.jpg
 
No picture yet, because I just thought of it.

I had to drop a few trees today to make room for my ground mount panels.

Turns out serval of the stumps (30" wide) basically align due south.

I think I'm gonna lag bolt some 4x6 pressure treated beams across those stumps and put one of my bright mounts on it.
 
I have 16 more panels I'm going to put on a movable sled type mount and keep it out in the front from November to February, and bring it around here in front of these for summer. I only get sun here this time of year from 10am to 2pm.
 

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Oldtimmer69 said:
I read in another post, you made like 200 kwhs in a day.. I had to come see what you had.. Lol I can definitely see how you made that happen ???? super nice setup!!
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Thank you! My daughter and I put a lot of work into it. I will probably make close to or over 400kwh in the spring when I get the rest of my inverters powered up, and if I can use up that much power, lol.
 
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Oldtimmer69 said:
I have 16 more panels I'm going to put on a movable sled type mount and keep it out in the front from November to February, and bring it around here in front of these for summer. I only get sun here this time of year from 10am to 2pm.
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Nice setup. Are trees your issue for short sun time in winter?
 
Oldtimmer69 said:
The mountain, the sun is just so low. I wish it was just trees.
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To the west of my acreage, there is a slight hill and across the road it is all woods. By 3 pm this time of year it is fully shaded.

While it looks good for a clear southerly peak sun yield, it isn't so good once that is over. It's the reason I put my first array in a different location.
 
Zwy said:
To the west of my acreage, there is a slight hill and across the road it is all woods. By 3 pm this time of year it is fully shaded.

While it looks good for a clear southerly peak sun yield, it isn't so good once that is over. It's the reason I put my first array in a different location.
Click to expand...
I get about 2.5 hrs more sun about 250ft behind this array so I'm going to make 2 movable ones, A single row of 8 each. Should help some i hope. I've been getting up to 70%, back down to the 40% in the morning.
 
eod1991 said:
My DIY rack setup, 20 panels per array. All welded and custom.
Click to expand...

I'm glad to see the triangle formed by another beam, makes it bipod rather than just an upright as shown in drawing.

The I-beams seem incredibly strong compared to the pivot made from hinges. I would think those are the weakest link.

1702830550709.png
 
Hedges said:
I'm glad to see the triangle formed by another beam, makes it bipod rather than just an upright as shown in drawing.

The I-beams seem incredibly strong compared to the pivot made from hinges. I would think those are the weakest link.

View attachment 183503
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They are absolutely the weakest point, however I think they are plenty strong. Each hinge is only holding about 400 lbs of weight. I fully welded all the bends on the hinges also. They only way they can fail is by shear.
 
eod1991 said:
Only time will tell, they have already experienced 30-40 mph gusts. Hopefully they will hold up but if not that’s what insurance is for.
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Out of curiosity. How much did it cost to add it to your insurance?
 
Looks like wind from the front puts it in compression, not likely a problem.
From the back is where strength would be tested.

Just don't let it swing up past horizontal ;)
 
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