End Cap Netting Attachment For C-channel Solar Panel Racking

thingiverse

This is an end cap for Unirac RM solar panel c-channel ballast tray racking. The ends are sharply cut and can draw blood if you catch them too hard with an arm or bare leg. We also have a bird problem so I drew these up with a diagonal entry to make it easy to capture and stretch netting without tools to keep the birds out from under solar panels installed this way. I used garden rocks to weight the netting so there wouldn't be gaps birds could use to get in. Some things to keep in mind with netting and your panels… Important - Some/most panels will have an antireflection coating/treatment done to the top surface. Don't let the netting sag to where it touches the panel glass or wind and dust might help the net sand it off. Where the coating is removed, solar collection efficiency will go down. As to netting, I used clear monofilament garden netting for bird control. The reason is it acts like a collection of cylindrical rod lenses and just kicks the light over at an angle. The light is still there but redirected some. You still see a shadow from the netting but if you move some of it up close to a white surface and illuminate it with the sun (parallel light rays), you should be able to see the shadow lighten up when the netting gets very close to the surface since the light redirected by the lensing effect still falls inside the "shadow". The netting itself is a small percentage of the total netted area but using something like black nylon netting will cost you any lensing effect benefits and block some small area of your panels. Your call on what kind of netting to use but opaque netting will partially shade. The clear monofilament netting looks like it shades by casting a shadow but the light missing from the net shadow has just been sent somewhere else. I printed these at 4 walls and 20% infill just to make them sturdy and last as long as possible out in the direct sun. I used yellow for visibility. The print is scaled so on my printer (Makerbot Mini+) they need to be lightly tapped into place using a rubber mallet and they don't just pull back out.