What Is an On-Site Solar System Survey?

  An on-site solar system survey is the first step every serious project takes. More and more factory owners, hotel owners, school committees, and hospital boards come to Mars Solar for solar system solutions. Because their sites are in urgent need of stable, clean and durable power energy.

           As a professional solar energy generating systems manufacturer and engineer, Mas Solar not only produces its own solar energy generating systems, but also provides design, installation and other engineering service support for customers' solar engineering projects. After a solar energy generating systems project begins, the first step is to survey the installation site.

           So what does Mas Solar surveying services look like? The following survey report is issued by the Mas Solar survey engineer after the survey is completed:

An on-site solar system survey answers the questions a satellite image cannot. Roof orientation and pitch can be estimated remotely, but structural capacity, shading from neighbouring buildings, existing board capacity and cable routes cannot. An on-site solar system survey is what turns a quotation from an estimate into a commitment.

Our engineers measure available area, confirm the roof can carry the added dead load plus wind uplift, log shading across the day, and inspect the main distribution board for spare ways and rating.

Most solar projects overrun for reasons that a on-site solar system survey would have caught: a roof that needs strengthening, a board with no spare capacity, or a cable route that is twice the assumed length. Each of those is cheap to design around and expensive to discover mid-installation.

The survey also fixes the mounting method. Ballasted flat-roof mounting, pitched-roof rail fixing and ground-mount frames have very different costs and very different structural implications, and only a site visit settles which applies.

After an on-site solar system survey we deliver a shaded site plan, a structural note, a single-line diagram of the proposed electrical connection, and a firm quotation with a stated generation estimate rather than a best-case figure.

Surveys are free for commercial and industrial projects in our target markets. To arrange one, see our contact page, or review the systems we survey for on the solar system for factory and solar power system for hotel pages. The U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Energy Technologies Office explains the assessment standards behind these checks.