Solar home visits

All 5 of the companies I've contacted have been out to my house now to do the initial site inspection.
REC Solar
Standard Renewable Energy
Cool Solar
Solar Independent Power Systems
Namaste Solar

I've talked to each company about the house, they've taken measurements of the roof and we've talked about how much of the roof I want to use, which parts are the most efficient to use, etc. Some of them did Solmetric readings and pictures to use in a computer program to put together a pretty accurate estimate of how much the shading around my house will affect my energy production at various times of the year and times of the day.

The Solmetric camera and the device that goes with it are very cool. The old style was pretty inaccurate and involved sort of getting on the roof and making some measurements and guesses about shading. Then a device with a big domed top was invented and you basically set it down in the right orientation and used a piece of chalk to mark out where there was shade at the moment, then did some correlation with the date and time to figure out what the effects on different dates and times would be. This is a very very clever little device. Then someone said "Hey...why don't we just take a picture of that, and build a computer program that takes all that data and does the projection? That would be radically faster and more accurate." So that's what they do. And what you get, with this great piece of software from NREL is a very accurate estimate using actual shading data from your actually situation to tell you with a high accuracy exactly how much solar energy every part of your useable roof will get through out the year.

So...one of the companies needs to come back out and do that, one didn't really even bother to offer and just sort of said "I can't see getting more than a 2kw system out of your roof" and the others have already done the pictures. So I'm waiting for the 4 final estimates then I'll write up all of the information I have about all of the options.

It'll be quite a bit of data...I'm hoping to organize it a bit better than what I've been doing so far.

Oh...and there's a chance that I'm a bit confused about the devices for the shading thing. I think the Solmetric is merely one brand of shading calculation equipment and that the camera used isn't special, just the device set up with the bubble on top and then the camera is a normal camera used in just the right way. I never remembered to get that clarified and the short research I did into it online hasn't been conclusive yet.

I'm likely going to have to cut my black walnut tree back quite a bit. I'm ok with that, I just hope it's not too bad. It doesn't seem to shade the roof that much to me except for 2 branches, but I'm certainly not an expert and will wait for the results of the magic shade calculation device.