Solar PV and curved roofs

[Dmeltd]

Has anyone put a system up on a curved roof?. I am looking at approx 170 panels to go up on a curved roof
and needless to say the bracketery on the market does not suit curved roofs, the radius is very slight over
a large area
To make putting the brackets in easier it would be simplier to follow the tiles on the curve but getting adjustable spacers and rail is
not possible

 

[Worcester]

It depends which way the roof faces and what the roofing material is.

We have one (very large) curved roof to do and we have two choices - the planners will make that decision for us!

Ours is due south, Kazlip roof 400mm seam to seam, for that we can either install
a) Schletter A frame with kalzip brackets (each row is at a different angle of incidence)
or
b) Uni-solar thin film (modules 387mm wide x 5.5m long = 144w) stuck direct to the roofing material, we just need 750sqm to get 50kwp - (we've got well more than that though

 

[Dmeltd]

Cheers for the reply WR, Its a ceramic yes ceramic tiled roof on clip in system.

thin film, ill never win the job i just need a good rail system to suit

what do you think?, the panels in the middle are for a solar thermal system which just happens to be in the middle of the roof
Fixings are no problem, its just the rail system i need to address

My solar pv array is to under and to the left of the thermal brackets shown, its a south facing roof

cheers

paul

 

[Worcester]

Most rails will 'bend' a little - we've had few roller coaster roofs.

Or try Sol-50 they have a 2m long rail.

 

[SolarCity]

It depends which way the roof faces and what the roofing material is.

We have one (very large) curved roof to do and we have two choices - the planners will make that decision for us!

Ours is due south, Kazlip roof 400mm seam to seam, for that we can either install
a) Schletter A frame with kalzip brackets (each row is at a different angle of incidence)
or
b) Uni-solar thin film (modules 387mm wide x 5.5m long = 144w) stuck direct to the roofing material, we just need 750sqm to get 50kwp - (we've got well more than that though

Did you actually carry out ths install in the end? We're looking at one now with a Kalzip roof and we're looking at installing A frames on it.

- - - Updated - - -

It depends which way the roof faces and what the roofing material is.

We have one (very large) curved roof to do and we have two choices - the planners will make that decision for us!

Ours is due south, Kazlip roof 400mm seam to seam, for that we can either install
a) Schletter A frame with kalzip brackets (each row is at a different angle of incidence)
or
b) Uni-solar thin film (modules 387mm wide x 5.5m long = 144w) stuck direct to the roofing material, we just need 750sqm to get 50kwp - (we've got well more than that though

Did you actually carry out ths install in the end? We're looking at one now with a Kalzip roof and we're looking at installing A frames on it.

 

[Worcester]

Nope, It didn't happen in the end, client gave us a few more buildings to choose from

We deal directly with the manufacturers of the mounting systems rather than the UK distributors, - this has the big advantage that they carry out the specification and design for these kinds of installations and then provide us with all the loading figures that we need to do the uplift and dead load calcs. Uplift / overturning forces on an A framed roof can be very large and you can easily be in danger of peelling the roof off!!!

On one roof we had to add over 4000 tek screws to fix the top surface to the supporting purlings.

You won't be able to do that on a kalzip roof as usually the roof relies on it's own weight to hold it in place from uplift

You definitely need a stuctuiral engineers report for that one!