A house surrounded by green and lush trees is indeed relaxing. Nevertheless, there might be more concerns once you plan to install solar panels. Will the solar panels work even under the shade? Here are some ways to know if a solar system will work for your home, even if it is nestled among trees:

Upload the Model Using SketchUp

To get a 3D model, you can seek help from an architect. After you get a .skd file, you can load it on SketchUp.

Put Some Solar Panels

After finishing touches on the model, you can use a SketchUp extension to position solar panels on the roof facing north automatically.

Put Some Trees

You can go to the 3D Warehouse of SketchUp and check out the free tree models you download. You can put the trees on the model thrice, then position and scale the model each time.

Experiment Using Shadows

You can check the shadows cast at any period of the year using the shadow rendering feature of SketchUp.

Generate the Report

You can see the amount of shade that will be cast over your panels in a year. You can also see the effect every month.