Sample design · This website is a demo, made to show what your business site could look like. The company, people and reviews on it are not real. · This website is a demo. The business is not real.

Built by Prebuiltwebmarket.com
Talk to the shop(720) 555-0185Book an energy audit

Boulder County, seven days a week for emergencies. Demo site with sample content.

What we install

One crew for the envelope, the mechanicals and the array, so the numbers actually add up.

See all eight solutions

Work out your own numbers

Every tool here runs in your browser on figures you can change. Nothing is emailed to us.

Open the full index

The people doing the work

Eleven people, one warehouse on Pearl Parkway, and a service radius we can drive in under an hour.

Meet the crew

Whittier, Boulder, 2025

Eleven modules, four topologies modelled, one clear winner

Two mature cottonwoods put moving shade across the south plane every afternoon from May. The string design lost 24 percent; microinverters lost 6 percent.

Array
4.6 kW DC, 11 modules at 420 W
Topology
Microinverters, one per module
Modelled loss, plain string
24.1 percent annual
A completed GreenLeaf Home Energy project in Whittier, BoulderWhittier, Boulder

How it went

The decisions, in order

01

The shade was not negotiable

Two protected cottonwoods to the south-west put dappled shade across three of the eleven module positions from mid-May to early October, worst between 3 pm and sunset. Removing the trees was neither possible nor, frankly, desirable.

02

Why a plain string failed

In series, the string runs at one operating point. A module at 40 percent shade has one substring bypassed and the next partially shaded, which pulls the current of every module wired with it. The annual model came out at 24.1 percent loss.

03

What module-level electronics changed

With one inverter per module, each panel runs at its own maximum power point and the shaded panels only lose their own output. Modelled loss dropped to 6.3 percent, for $690 more in hardware.

04

The counter-intuitive part

The worst case was not full shade. A module sitting under 40 percent dappled shade cost the string more than one in complete shadow, because complete shadow simply bypasses out of the circuit while partial shade drags the current.

What the homeowner said

They showed us the maths for both options and let us decide. The trees stayed and the system still works.

Rosalind Achebe, Whittier

6,090 kWh in year one, within 1.4 percent of the shaded model.

Start with the test, not the quote

Three to four hours on site, a written report in five business days, and a recommendation that might well be to spend less than you planned.

Cookie preferences

Choose which cookies you allow. You can change this at any time from the link in the footer.