A tree is shading my solar panels

A tree is shading my solar panels — What It Means and What To Do

Production dropping in a predictable daily window; panel-level monitoring showing one or two strings falling off while the rest hold; a shadow crossing the array in the morning or late afternoon rather than at midday; worse output this summer than the same month last year as the canopy grew; shade that only reaches the roof from October to February when the sun sits low. Photograph the array at 9am, noon, and 4pm on a clear day before you call anyone — that is the entire diagnosis.

Not urgent

A money problem with a horticultural cause, and nothing about it is a safety question. How much money depends on your inverter architecture: with a single string inverter, shading a few cells can drag the whole string's output down disproportionately, while with microinverters or optimizers the loss is roughly confined to the shaded modules. The same shadow therefore costs very different amounts on two different roofs, and that figure is what the pruning decision should be built on.

What it usually costs

Normally a tree trimming job: $250 to $1,400 around Indianapolis, depending on size and access. A range, not a quote.

What it usually costs

A tree is shading my solar panels by town

Other tree problems