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Calculating Safe Distance from Walls and Trees for Successful Solar Performance

Voltaic Systems — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 14:58:22 +0000

Can you install solar panels facing a wall or tree? It depends on distance from the object, latitude and panel sizing!

For northern latitudes and taller buildings, the panels need to be further and further away from a given obstacle to see the sun. Choosing the right distance is critical for installation—a properly sized system won’t survive the winter if it’s installed too close to an obstacle.

In this blog I’ll show you how to calculate this crucial distance for your installation, then I’ll go into more detail about how those calculations are derived for my fellow nerds and engineers.

Calculating Distance

There are two distances that we’re concerned about in the graphic below:
H – How much higher the obstacle is than the panel? Precisely, the difference in height between the top of the obstacle and the bottom of the solar panel.
D – How far the panel is from the obstacle? Precisely, the horizontal distance from the most Northern tip of the obstacle to the most Southern part of the solar panels.

The Distance D is determined by a Multiplication Factor F. This changes depending on your location (see chart below). The further North you are installing, the further the panel will need to be away from the obstacle. Calculating D is simple:

D = F x H

Location	Latitude	Factor (F)	Example Height (H)	Example Distance (D)
Zone 1 – Seattle, Bismarck	45-50	6.85	10 ft	69 ft
Zone 2 – New York, Boise	40-45	3.51	10 ft	35 ft
Zone 3 – San Francisco, D.C.	35-40	3.11	10 ft	31 ft
Zone 4 – Atlanta, Austin	30-35	2.12	10 ft	21 ft
Zone 5 – Miami, Houston	25-30	1.89	10 ft	19 ft

Background

Voltaic sizes solar power systems based on their expected performance in December to ensure that the systems run year-round. December is when the sun is lowest in the sky and shadows are at their longest, so if you’re installing in June or July you can’t judge shadows with your eye.

At northern latitudes, a panel might only see the equivalent of 2 hours of direct sunlight over the course of the average December day. If the panel is shaded for the first half of the day by a building due South of it, then that installation will require double the amount of solar power. If that’s not accounted for during install, then the system will go down during the winter.

For the purposes of this exercise I assumed that the hours of 9AM – 3PM cover most of the significant sunlight hours in the wintertime. In other words, if you’re not shaded during these hours, then our estimates will hold up. This picture provided by Shademap.app shows the shading in Pittsburg at 9AM in early January to illustrate this point. If you use the factors in the table above, then your system will not see shading between 9AM – 3PM in your corresponding zone.

Math

To calculate the above multiplication factors, we took the height of the sun in degrees in December at 9AM as θ and plugged it into the following equation:

F = 1 / tan (θ)

Thank you for reading along and feel free to reach out if you are unsure about your installation location. We highly recommend using Shademap.app to check shading in your area.

Hack The Planet Limits Poaching With ScannerEdge

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:09:50 +0000

Hack The Planet is a Dutch non-profit that develops technological solutions to protect nature. Their latest product is ScannerEdge, an intruder detection system with LoRaWAN and satellite connectivity.

ScannerEdge deployed in the forest.

SmartDetect is able to identify humans within a 1km distance if they are using nearly any type of communications equipment.

There are some interesting challenges in the design of a system deployed in remote locations like national parks in Zambia. Power consumption for communication is one that every IoT developer experiences. Hack The Planet uses the very efficient Semtech LR11X chip for the LoRaWAN version and for scanning. They strategically schedule the scanning to balance power used vs probability of identifying an intruder. On the satellite version, they use the Ground Control RockBLOCK 9603 satellite modem and carefully limit data transmitted.

Humans and wildlife will target electronics devices placed in the field. The team generally places the sensors high up in trees, well away from known trails, to be out of the range of elephants and out of sight of poachers. They will sometimes coat the devices with chili oil to deter elephants. This however, doesn’t seem to always work with monkeys and rodents.

Larger enclosure is needed for the satellite version.

The systems draw power from one of our small solar panel, the P126.

Learn more about Hack The Planet and their partner, Smart Parks.

Obscape Uses Voltaic In Rugged Environmental Devices

Voltaic Systems — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 17:56:29 +0000

Obscape is a designer and manufacturer of easy-to-use environmental monitoring products. Their devices are placed in extremely challenging locations around the world including coastlines, ports, offshore drilling platforms. Once deployed, they take photographs and measure wave height, water quality, water levels and water flow.

Solar powered Time-Lapse Camera deployed on a beach.

For Obscape’s customers, product reliability is a critical feature. Obscape outlines the reasons they choose to use Voltaic solar panels in this video.

Voltaic has spent extensive time and resources validating the material stack used in all of our ETFE panels. They have been tested against a wide variety of environmental forces:

combined UV, temperature and humidity
thermal cycling
thermal shock
vibration
mechanical shock
saltwater
chemical exposure

The solar panels have also been field tested with well over a million panels deployed across a wide variety of use cases and environmental conditions.

Solar panels on OBS-BUOY

Voltaic collaborates with our customers to ensure mechanical and electrical designs follow best practices. Obscape embeds each of the panels precisely and securely in the enclosure which shields them from impact. This design step extends the length of the panel by several years.

Solar panels in Time-Lapse camera during production.

We are excited to work with companies like Obscape who help their customers better understand the world around them.

Jeng IoT Introduces Solar-ConTracker

Voltaic Systems — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 18:33:14 +0000

Dutch-based Jeng IoT recently released a new version of their ConTracker asset tracking solution. The new tracker includes an integrated solar panel (P134) which makes the device fully autonomous.

ConTracker Use Case

The ConTracker was developed with the recycling industry to help them manage large fleets of containers. Prior to using the ConTracker, the companies didn’t know the location of their containers.

Through a dashboard or API, Jeng provides accurate current and historical geographic location of large assets and delivers event notifications. Users can get alerted when devices move as expected or if there is suspicious activity. Often containers are rented out to a 3rd party, and separate views and permissions can be assigned to those customers.

System Design and Power Management

The solar panel is embedded just below the surface of an ABS enclosure using 3M’s VHB pressure activated tape. When light is available, it the panel charges an internal LiIon battery cell.

The tracker sends data over the cellular network using an NB-IoT modem. In order to preserve power, it sends less data when the system is static versus when it is moving and can stay indoors in a warehouse for up to two months without losing power.

One design element that we like is that the enclosure can be produced in any color to match the vehicle fleet. This makes the tracker blend in more easily.

Durable Solar Panel for Embedded Applications

Voltaic solar panels are designed for long term outdoor deployments. The material stack in the panel has been thoroughly qualified and passed a wide range of environmental, mechanical and immersion tests. In addition, the stack has been deployed in well over one million asset trackers since 2019. The objective is for the panel to last over ten years in most outdoor environments.

The tests include:

accelerated UV well beyond IEC 61215
TC50 thermal cycling
1,000 hours damp heat
vibration and mechanical shock based on SAE J1455 and MIL-STD 810H
IK08/IK09 referencing IEC 62262
salt water immersion
exposure to chemicals and oils

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Solar Semaphore For Stockholm Ferries

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:44:18 +0000

Passenger ferries in the Stockholm archipelago rely on a century-old system of mechanical semaphores to signal when someone is waiting to board. The problem is they are hard to see in fog, rain, snow, at night, or even overly sunny days.

Göran Nordahl from Lohmega has equipped the semaphore with an accelerometer that detects whether it is raised or not and communicates this via BLE to a nearby base station. The base station then transmits the information over LoRaWAN via The Things Network, and the semaphore status is displayed on a digital timetable visible to the ferry captain. This allows the ferry to move at an efficient pace along the main route instead of detouring to every island to check for passengers. This reduces fuel and reduces the chance of the ferry captain skipping a stop when there is a waiting passenger.

The base station features an e-ink display, RGB LEDs around the perimeter, and a Voltaic 2 Watt (P126) solar panel for charging. The LEDs act as a visual aid for the captain when approaching the pier in complete darkness.

As always, the main technical challenges in a system like this are antenna design and power supply. The long, dark, and cold Swedish winter poses a major problem. CST Microwave Studio and Optenni helped in antenna development, while low-power design from Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52840 , robust rechargeable MP Series batteries from Saft, and durable solar panels help address the power challenges.

Here’s a video of the semaphores in action.

Lohmega can add additional sensors, such as for wind direction and speed, water level, or wave height, into the base station.

ShadeMap Improves Solar Device Placement

Voltaic Systems — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 22:15:58 +0000

When customers have solar system performance issues with city deployments of IoT devices, the first question we ask is “what are the coordinates?” Then we immediately open ShadeMap.

ShadeMap visually shows shading on nearly every location by time of day and time of year. It allows us and our customers to quickly assess the relative performance of multiple locations and adjust our solar sizing model to account for the reduction in performance.

Lets look at the location in front of our office in New Lab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in June (summer solstice) and December (winter solstice). A quick look on Google Maps and you’d think it looks ok. Nearby buildings aren’t particularly tall and the street is fairly wide.

If we look at ShadeMap in June, we see that it starts to receive direct sun around 8AM.

It then starts to get shaded around 5PM. Overall, not too bad.

In December, it is shaded for most of the day except for when the sun sneaks through in the early afternoon. It will maybe only get an hour of direct sun a day.

If we were trying to deploy a device in the Navy Yard, we can scan nearby locations and pick one that has better sun exposure. This is two blocks away on 5th Street.

To take it to the next level, you can even show the solar intensity at the location. It doesn’t account for panel angle or rotation, but will provide a numeric value to back up the more visual shading feedback from the tool. This location next to our office receives 1776 hours of direct sunlight a year.

100 feet to the south at the Navy Yard entrance receives nearly 3,000 hours of direct sun, nearly twice as much.

Next time you are looking to deploy a solar powered IoT device in an area with buildings, trees or other physical structures, we highly recommend looking at ShadeMap.

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Seeed SenseCAP Weather Station on Rooftop Farm

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 15 Jul 2025 19:42:00 +0000

With the help of Harmony Analytica, we installed a solar powered weather station from seeed studio on the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm. In this post, we show you how to:

wire the CORE system to power and share data between the S700 Weather Sensor and the S2100 LoRaWAN Data Logger
appropriately size a solar panel solution

The goal of the weather station is to provide data that can help inform and improve water usage on the farm.

Weather Station Schematic

We need to deliver power from the Voltaic battery to both the data logger and weather sensor and connect the data lines between the two devices.

The weather sensor sends data to the data logger, then it is sent over The Things Network to the Harmony Analytica dashboard. We added our optional battery health monitor to keep track of the power performance.

Solar Powered Weather Station Hardware

We used the following components:

S700 Weather Sensor
S2100 LoRaWAN Data Logger
V102 CORE LFP Battery
Optional CORE Battery Health Monitor
9 Watt 18 Volt Solar Panel (P108)
Large Solar Panel Bracket (BK103)
2 x PG 9 glands
1 x M16 Bulkhead Connector (W280)
Hose clamps)

Solar System Sizing

We measured the power consumption and found that it was between 0.25 and 0.5 Watts with an expected daily total of 9 Watt hours. Our charge controller adds another 2 Watt hours.

We opted for our 9 Watt panel which can produce 21 watt hours per day on average or nearly 1.9X our consumption (our target is at least 1.5X). Our current smallest 12V battery is the 18Ah V102 which could power the system for 18+ days with no sun. This is oversized, but certainly workable.

Wiring and Setup

We brought the power into a small, waterproof enclosure using our M16 Bulkhead connector. We used PG9 glands to bring in the 5mm cable from the two devices and Wago clips to connect the positive and ground from the battery to the devices as well as the data lines.

Then, it was simply a matter of attaching all the components neatly to a pole.

System Performance

Once, installed, we can watch the weather data come in on Harmony Analytica’s dashboard and the solar and battery status on voltaicsystems.io.

The green line shows the state of charge (full), orange shows the solar panel input and magenta the power consumption. Note that the power goes up during the day when the irradiance and lux sensors are activated.

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Lifetime Costs of Voltaic CORE LFP vs AGM Solar Systems

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 17:58:36 +0000

Our integrated, Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) battery solar systems reduce both upfront and long-term maintenance costs of remote deployments. In this post, we lay out the advantages of running a fleet of remote devices from our CORE Solar System vs a typical lead acid AGM-based system.

The bulk of the savings comes down to two key aspects:

CORE is dramatically lighter and smaller which leads to lower shipping and labor costs during installation
LFP cells have roughly 2X the lifespan of deepy cycle AGM in the field – this reduces truck rolls and battery replacement costs

Shipping Costs – Battery and System Weights of Solar Powered Systems

Lead acid batteries are 1.8 times heavier than LFP cells on an Amp-hour basis.

LFP vs AGM Weight Comparison

	Voltaic CORE LFP	AGM-based System
Capacity	96Ah	100Ah
Weight (pounds)	35	65
Weight per Ah (pounds/Ah)	0.36	0.65

The higher weight and bulk of an AGM battery system is substantial. A competitor 100W AGM solar system ships one system per pallet, versus 8 systems per pallet for Voltaic’s 100W CORE system. This can increase upfront costs by $300 per system.

System Weight and Shipping Costs

Component	Voltaic CORE LFP	AGM-based System
Solar Panel	100 Watt	85 Watt
Battery	96Ah	100Ah
Cost	$1145	$1199
Shipping Weight (pounds)	64	142
Systems per pallet	8	1
Shipping cost (per system)	$100	$400+

Assembly and Installation Costs – Solar Powered Systems

A typical AGM installation uses a large NEMA enclosure to house a DIN-rail mounted charge controller and a battery strapped to the bottom of the cabinet.

The weight of a 100W AGM system will exceed OSHA’s limits for moving without mechanical assistance. In most cases, it will require two people to install.

In contrast, the 100W CORE system can often be installed by a single person and all components are below OSHA’s weight thresholds.

Replacement Costs – Lifecycles of AGM vs LFP Batteries

The lifetime of an AGM and LFP battery varies heavily based on depth of discharge. We recommend most customers have 5 days of runtime with no sun which translates to 20-30% depth of discharge on most days. 80-90% discharge is possible with stretches of bad weather.

Most sources indicate that LFP batteries will have twice as many cycles, cutting battery replacement costs and labor in half. Depending on location, that labor could easily be anywhere from $200 to $1,000 and up for a truck roll.

Approximate Cycle Life by Depth of Discharge (>80% Capacity)

Depth of Discharge	Voltaic CORE	Deep Cycle AGM
50%	4000+	~1500

Conclusion – CORE LFP Can Reduce Fleet Costs

In addition to the hardware, the cost of a remote solar system deployment includes: shipping, labor and maintenance.

By reducing the weight and increasing the lifetime of the battery, Voltaic CORE systems cut the lifetime cost of a remote solar system.

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Security Application: Solar Powered Verkada Camera + Sierra Wireless

Voltaic Systems — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 21:25:53 +0000

We recently put together a system to solar power a Verkada security camera, Sierra Wireless (Semtech) cellular router and Teltonika PoE Switch on a construction site. We bench tested the actual power consumption of each of the devices on their own and as a system under different scenarios in order to accurately size the solar array and battery storage.

Security System Components

These components were selected for their low power consumption. Lower power draw translates directly to a smaller solar system sizing in the next step. Conversely, choosing higher power components will lead to a larger solar system to maintain the same uptime. Thanks to Rick Miller from Island Tech Services for bringing the pieces together.

The infrared lights on the camera increase system power consumption at night from 8.6 watts to 13.7 watts. We assumed 14 hours of darkness in Atlanta (our deployment location) during December to get to an average of 11.6 watt average power consumption.

Camera: Verkada CD52E Outdoor Dome
Cellular Wireless Router: Sierra Wireless Airlink RX55
PoE Switch: Teltonika 4-port TSW101

Power Characterization

Device(s)	Mode	Watts	Measured / Calculated
TSW101	Idling	0.9	Measured
CD52E Active	Standard Mode	5.0	Calculated
CD52E Active	Night Mode	9.7	Calculated
RX55	Idle	1.4	Measured
RX55 Streaming	Standard Mode	2.7	Calculated
RX55 Streaming	Night Mode	3.1	Calculated
TSW101 + RX55 + CD52E	Standard Mode	8.6	Measured
TSW101 + RX55 + CD52E	Night Mode	13.7	Measured
TSW101 + RX55 + CD52E	Average	11.6	Calculated

We ran the tests in our office and monitored the video livestream and motion event recognition using Verkada’s very easy to use portal.

Solar System Sizing

For this system to run continuously, we need the solar panel to be capable of producing at least 1.5X the average power consumption per day.

The least amount of solar energy falls on Atlanta in December. During this month, a south facing solar panel will receive the equivalent of 2.6 hours of “full” sunlight a day.

We’re consuming 11.6 watts * 24h or 278 watt hours per day. The panel should therefore be able to produce 420 watt hours per day. For Voltaic, that translates to our 200 Watt CORE System. The 200 watt panel can produce 520 watt hours per day (2.6 x 200) and the 96Ah battery is capable of running the system for about 4 days with no sun.

You can use our offgrid solar sizing tool to help pick out the best solar system for your application.

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Ambient Energy Harvesting on IoT Show

Voltaic Systems — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 13:40:31 +0000

Voltaic spoke with Olivier Bloch from the IoT Show and Björn Rosqvist from Qoitech about harvesting ambient energy and the future of powering IoT devices. Voltaic Systems designs small solar panels for high volume outdoor, industrial applications including asset tracking environmental monitoring.

https://youtu.be/98mFpqKv2O4

There were a few key points from the show:

The technologies to harvest and store energy from the sun and other light and energy sources are well established and deployed at scale
Energy harvesting can reduce costs and wastes by greatly driving down battery replacement costs (both hardware and labor)
Using tools such as Qoitech’s Otii Ace can help developers drive down device energy consumption, leading to lower BOMs and higher uptimes
Power production in energy harvesting applications is probabalistic – we don’t have estimates but certainty on how much energy will be available in different environments
Designing an energy harvesting device is a systems problem and requires coordination across mechanical, electrical and software teams

Talk with a Voltaic engineer about your next project.

Talk to a Sales EngineerThanks to IoT Stars for coordinating this event.