I've been moving solar panels. I wasn't going to pull everything down and redo it. Plan was to leave the solar panels alone, build new racks and just move them over. That way the solar panels don't have to come down then go back up on the roof which would really suck. The new racking uses 12 gauge 1.5 inch unistrut. The steel unistrut is far more solid than the aluminum racking normally used. I can walk on my extreme weather solar panels where the frames butt together and I'm like 230lb. It's also only $8 per foot of panel, $4 per single foot of unistrut. I'll still reuse the original aluminum racking. That shit wasn't cheap. But where the lengths of rack but together I'll weld them in addition to using the little bullshit rack couplers. Also the engineering company spec'ed about one metal roof to racking pedestal about every 4 feet or so from what I've seen thus far. I'll add up all the total liner feet and divide by number of roof to rack pedestals. I'm sure I won't like the number I get. When I redo the aluminum racking I'll use more roof to racking pedestals, more like one about every 3 feet. For the unistrut I used 6 roof to racking pedestals over each 23 foot span. So 12 pedestals are holding 7 panels. That's one reason it's so solid. 5 over that 23' span would have probably been fine. That's about what they used to attach the other panels, 5 pedestals for 7 panels. It's worked for 5 and a half years. There's definitely cheaper roof racking systems. They all look all look way more sketchy. When it comes to racking panels, more is more.
I'm hearing lots of good things about the output on the new panels these days... I still hope to build something in the near future for my garage to ensure my freezers stay online through thick and thin. I think I will put the panels on the ground so I have easy access to them, probably on a rack with some sort of spindle to swing left/right and up/down. Anyway, that's the plan as the weather here can get damn nasty.
I didn't realize that unistrut was that expensive,,, I've got a pretty big pile of it , hauled it off of a job yrs ago ,,, , was supposed to take it to a scrapyard,, maybe 12 yrs or so ago. I've been getting ready to use some of it for fence post . Good luck on your new racking system .
