![]() This device uses a sun path chart based on your location and reflects the solar window through a plastic dome. If any of the methods given below show more than 10% obstruction to sunlight during the prime hours of the day, you may need to reconsider the collector site. Modern technology provides several tools to help you work out the path you need to clear in the air to optimize your solar collectors' efficiency. AND, it’s a lot of fun to use.You don't need to sit and track the sun's path for a year to determine your location's solar window. A great tool, invented, designed and manufactured by a small, American Company. It is made in Linden Tennessee of US made components, so you know I love it. I have used a Pathfinder for years, and it is truly a life-time tool that requires no batteries, although you may need to buy more of the “Sunpath” paper diagrams if you choose to go truly old school and trace the shading with a wax pencil rather than snap a digital pic. Just snap a picture with a digital camera, phone or tablet, and you will have a very accurate analysis, nicely presented with tables and graphics, ready to present to the potential customer or fellow solar geeks. Courter has done a great job of creating a fantastic software package to work with the pathfinder. The current owner of the Pathfinder company is Anthony Courter, and Mr. With or without software, you can determine the solar loss due to shading. Not only is it great for pro solar installers, landscapers and gardeners, it would be a great teaching tool for a science teacher or scout master. A beautiful thing about it too, is that unlike the plethora of solar site assessment apps that are out there, the Pathfinder is great for figuring shading for Photovoltaics (PV), solar thermal or even gardening. It’s wonderfully clever, like something Leonardo DaVinci would have invented. The rubber tipped legs on the tripod telescope out, allowing a person to use the Pathfinder on sloping roofs and other rough sites.”Įssentially, you gaze into the semitransparent dome, and it magically shows you where the shade will fall by month and time of day. A compass and a bubble level are built into each Pathfinder, making it easy to keep the instrument level and facing in the right direction. A wax pencil can be used to trace around the reflected shadows on the sunpath diagram, providing a permanent record of each reading. The underlying diagrams are latitude specific and are engineered with data for the entire year. Any trees, buildings, or other objects that could cast shadows are reflected in the plastic dome, clearly showing shading patterns at the site. Here’s a video that explains things pretty clearly (thanks for the link Jeff)!Įxactly how it works is a little hard to explain, but in the introduction to the manual it states: “The Solar Pathfinder is used for shade analysis (solar or canopy/habitat studies). Not only does his device work great, but it’s easy to use, accurate, ruggedly built, and just plain ingenious.” The fellow deserves some kind of award for forward thinking and design. Bernie saw a clear need and invented a product to fill that need. Richard Perez, the founder of Home Power Magazine stated, “Bernie’s manufacturing techniques are a symphony of basic physics applied to hardware store materials. ![]() The Pathfinder is elegant in its simplicity. Bernie was a long-time solar enthusiast, and during the energy crisis and solar boom of the late 70’s, Bernie struck on a brilliant design for a solar site analysis tool. The Solar Pathfinder was invented back in 1978 by a renegade scientist and inventor named Bernie Haines. It is a truly elegant piece of equipment, and looks like it might be a prop from the original 60’s Star Trek series or possibly a steampunk device from the deck of Captain Nemo’s Nautilus. Despite the fact that there are some dandy apps out there for analyzing solar potential at a given site, the good old Pathfinder is one of those rare cases of an analog tool adapting quite nicely to the modern, digital era, and it works equally well with the accompanying software, or using it the old fashioned, analog way. Yes, it’s true! We went out and surveyed sites for solar installations with nothing more than a pencil and paper and some crude stone tools! Actually, the tool we used was anything but crude, and in reality, I still rely on my Solar Pathfinder to do really solid solar site surveys. Long, long ago, in the dark days before mandatory digital technology, we toiled away installing solar equipment without the benefit of phone apps. ![]()
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