Protect Your Solar Panels from Debris & Golf Balls with Netting
Netting is a fantastic solution for many different types of protective and safety situations. Especially those that property owners and building managers may encounter. Over the many years of supplying specialty nets and custom netting products for our customers, Gourock.com has some great experience and expertise in a very wide variety of unique situations, projects, and applications for protective nets. At Gourock, we supply solar panel protection netting to meet the popular need of our clients to protect their panels from damage caused by objects like errant golf balls, large hail stones, airborne debris, and bird walks. Our premium netting mesh construction performs exceptionally well in ensuring the safety of solar panels.
Prevent Solar Panel Damage with Protective Netting
Many of our clients that require barrier nets to protect solar panel installations. Many are those that have homes or property that are located close to golf course fairways and golf course driving range locations. Often their solar panels are located up on the roof of their house, and errant golf ball shots can impact them from the adjoining fairway or golf range. This causes a lot of damage or rendering the panels inoperable.
We also see the same situation with municipal or organizational solar panel installations that are located in an open field that is in-line with a golf course fairway or range area. In these cases, golf ball shots can come flying in to the larger solar panel installation zone and cause damage as well. Consequently, damage to the panels and subsequent replacement costs are quite high, and mitigating those damaging factors is a primary objective for our netting customers in this case.
DuPont® Twisted-Knotted Nylon Netting in a 1″ Mesh Size
Gourock.com highly recommends the quality #12 X 1″ DuPont® type 66-728 twisted-knotted tarred nylon golf barrier netting for these types of solar panel protection projects. This particular netting choice features a high tensile strength nylon twine material. Therefore, the benefit is a relatively thin twine thickness while maintaining durable strength. In the case of the #12 twisted twine, this is a 0.062″ diameter with a minimum tensile strength rating of 100 lbs.
This golf barrier netting selection is built with a 1″ mesh size, which is optimal for golf barrier netting purposes – and it also features an additional extra-resilient weather coating (known as a ‘tarred’ netting) that enhances its UV and moisture protection. In fact, the #12 X 1″ tarred twisted-knotted nylon netting from Gourock.com carries a 5 year prorated warranty regarding UV exposure and durability. This netting features a relative average of about 10 years of dependable strength in full-time outdoor installations.
Custom Netting Advantages
Gourock.com offers this netting built according to most any specific dimensions or sizing requirements needed for your solar panel protective netting project, and the nets are 100% Made in the USA – built per-order. Typically manufactured with a sewn-in 5/16″ Dacron® polyester rope bordered edge, and often in a square mesh pattern for horizontally-installed nets, this particular safety netting is a perfect selection to protect solar panels due to it’s function, lightweight construction, excellent durability, and ease-of-use.
At Gourock, we meet the needs of clients who want to protect their solar panels from golf balls and similarly sized debris or objects while maintaining strong energy performance. To minimize material spanning over the area and reduce or eliminate the risk of panel damage, potential panel replacement, and downtime, we offer netting solutions tailored to their specific requirements. Those factors strongly guide our clients to the #12 X 1″ DuPont® nylon netting in most instances. Gourock typically has the custom nets built and ready to ship out to your location within 5-10 working days of your order, just depending on netting sizing and volume level.
Solar Panel Protection with Bird Netting, Debris Nets, and Hail Barrier Netting
Other commonplace situations in which protective netting is needed over solar panels is to exclude problematic birds, to block large hail stones, and also as a general debris barrier for various objects that may be airborne due to wind or storms. There are many different techniques that our netting customers take to suspend the netting over their area – and a popular approach is to tension aircraft cabling between a series of surrounding support posts, and then to clip the rope bordered edge of the netting to the cable with snap hooks. That said, the nylon netting products we supply are very user-friendly, so you can always develop your own preferred installation approach using any materials you’re comfortable with at your location.
Finally, should you wish to be mailed a sample swatch of the #12 X 1″ twisted-knotted nylon netting, or any of our other netting selections, the samples are free-of-charge and simply get in touch with us to let us know where to mail to! Many thanks again to all of our very appreciated custom netting customers – it is our pleasure to work with you and be your trusted netting supplier!
– Josh Grzyb @ Gourock Netting
Do you recommend a preferred approach to protecting solar panels on the roof from golf balls? What is the best method for placing nets over solar panels? I have a concrete roof so how would I adhere the posts to the roof? How much do the nets reduce the capacity of the solar cells?
I’m considering placing a wall of nets in front of the area of the roof where the panels are. The length is 30′ and height would need to be 20′. Given those dimensions, how many poles would I need to attach the nets to? What would be the cost for a 20′ x 30′ net?
Good Afternoon George – thank you for writing! As far as the netting goes, the most popular selection over the years for these projects has been the #12 X 1″ tarred twisted-knotted nylon netting, square mesh pattern, with a 5/16″ rope bordered perimeter edge. We can provide any sizing at all, and a 20′ X 30′ netting panel from that choice has a price of $536.88 – see here for product details: https://www.gourock.com/KNN121.html We don’t have any formal testing information available regarding effect on panel production, but anecdotally from a few customers over the years we have heard that the production effect is minimal, usually less than 5% in average cases un the #12 X 1″ nylon. It is as thin as possible, with a large of a mesh to be functional – so is a great protective netting option for these types of uses. As far as installation goes, you’ll probably want to speak with a fencing post installer to see what the best approach to mounting steel posts to a concrete surface may be. It’ll probably be some sort of bolt-on plate base using masonry bolts and epoxy, combined with either a welded post or screw-in post section. We don’t formally advise on that construction aspect of things – however a fencing installer or roofing installer may be a good lead on that. Generally speaking you’ll probably want to have support for the netting every 5′-8′ or so, in order to keep the mesh pretty taught and reducing any inward pull on the netting edges when it is hooked to the surrounding posts. This particular post that you have replied to includes an image that shows a pretty commonplace approach for a lot of solar panel netting installations – hopefully it helps out with context! Keep in touch at any time, and thanks again for getting in touch! – http://www.gourock.com
What do you have for golf ball protection on tile roofs?
Good Morning Allan – thank you for writing and getting in touch! For the golf ball protection netting itself, you should most consider the 1″ tarred twisted-knotted nylon netting (in either a #12 twine or #18 twine thickness). This netting is available from Gourock built to any particular dimensions/sizing that you may want to be working with to cover your solar panel array. Our company doesn’t offer the supply of the structural elements of these projects (for instance, poles/posts/brackets/etc.) as we specialize in netting fabrication specifically – so you’ll probably want to bounce some of the details by a roofing contractor that can best determine the proper mounting approach to get poles/posts affixed to your tiles or roof structure. Hopefully this helps out a bit during your research, and feel free to keep in touch and we can assist with any netting-related inquiries you may have about that aspect of things! Thanks again!
Live on golf course in Surprise, AZ. In the last three years we have 23 solar panels hit by golf balls. One is not working. Would like to find protective covers that fit over the panels to stop golf balls.
Thank you for getting in touch Betty! We supply netting panels that can be built according to any dimensions at all that you wish to be working with – so can certainly assist on the netting aspect of your project. Typically used for project needs like yours is the 1″ square mesh twisted-knotted nylon netting, with a 5/16″ polyester rope bordered perimeter edge. You’ll need to have some sort of structure available to hook or attach the netting to, which is often a series of posts or poles that are intermittently placed around the perimeter of the solar panel array. Often there is also a tensioned wire that is spanned between the posts in pr to have a nice rigid attachment plane to clip the netting to. Gourock specializes in the netting itself, and can accommodate most any custom sizing needs that you have – so that the overall fit can be pretty perfect for your particular area of coverage. Should you have some sizing notes to email over, absolutely feel free to do so right through the Contact Us page on our Gourock.com site/store and it is our pleasure to correspond with you! Thank you again!
I am a Sales Rep for IMPACT Solar Energy in El Mirage, AZ. We have been looking for netting for our Golf Course Fairway clients and love what I see. Our challenge, as many of the above have identified: a way to wrap down to the roof level on the fairway side. If we can resolve this issue, we may purchase from you.
Sounds great Tom! Thank you for writing in with your notes and comments on your solar panel protection project needs! We can absolutely supply you with the barrier/protective nets themselves, constructed according to most any dimensions/sizes that you wish to be working with per-location. This allows for netting that not only installs very nicely, looks great, and performs very dependably for the long term – but also allows you to cater to each of your individual clients with specifically made netting panels for their particular site. The rope bordering that is sewn around the edges of the netting mesh is a strong and effective attachment point for you to work with, as most nets end up being clipped, hooked, or strapped to some sort of framing structure, wires/cables, or specialty bracket. It will be our pleasure to assist you with your solar panel protection nets, and always feel free to get in touch with Gourock.com at your convenience and we can assist! Thank you again!