Lift for installing solar panels (photovoltaics): which to choose

Installing a photovoltaic system is work at height in two parts: you need to get safely to the roof slope or the support structure, and you need to deliver heavy, delicate material to the top: panels, mounting structure, inverters, cabling. Well-chosen equipment (a cherry picker, or aerial work platform, MEWP, plus a telehandler for the material) cuts the installation time by days and eliminates carrying panels up a ladder. Below we suggest what to rent depending on the type of building.

A detached house roof: a 16–20 m cherry picker

With houses what matters is not the height (the eaves are usually at 3–4 m, the ridge at 6–9 m) but access: the machine has to stand on the driveway or lawn and reach over the eaves, the gutter or the conservatory. An articulating boom lift with a working height of 16–20 m works best: the articulated boom “goes over” the obstacle and the platform is set parallel to the roof slope. Two fitters in the platform (capacity 227–250 kg) fix the hooks and rails, and the panels are passed up from the ground by a third person or carried up in the platform a few at a time.

• Narrow access through a gate of up to 2 m? Choose an electric model or a compact diesel one up to about 1.8 m wide and about 2 m high in the transport position.
• Soft lawn: ask for a machine with 4×4 drive and an oscillating axle, or for ground protection mats under the wheels.
• Work near a power line above the plot requires a safe distance from the conductors: say so when ordering and we will choose a boom with a margin of reach.

A hall, warehouse, flat roof: a scissor lift for the work + a telehandler for the material

On the flat roofs of halls installations are counted in hundreds of kilowatts, so the problem is logistics: hundreds of panels and tonnes of structure have to get to the top. A set of machines works here:

• Telehandler (Manitou 14–18 m, capacity 4 t) passes pallets with panels and structure straight onto the roof, to the place of installation, without carrying them by hand up stairs or a ladder.
• Scissor lift (diesel rough terrain 12–18 m or electric 8–14 m) serves installation at the parapet, rooflights and the roof edge, and running cable routes down the façade to the switchroom.
• An articulating or telescopic boom lift of 20–26 m is useful at tall halls, when the cable route and inverters have to be installed on the outer wall and the machine stands in the yard.

Before passing pallets onto the roof, check its permissible load: the pallets are set down directly above the supports of the structure, never in the middle of a span.

A ground-mounted solar farm: only rough terrain machines

On solar farms the support structures are low (2–3.5 m), but the ground is unsurfaced and the distances are large. What is needed is not height but mobility: a telehandler takes pallets along the rows, and for installing the mounting tables and cable routes at transformer stations diesel 4×4 scissor lifts with outriggers are used. Electric machines on non-marking tyres stay at the base: they will not get around on open ground or after rain.

How do you choose the height and outreach?

• Working height = height of the platform floor + about 2 m. For a ridge at 9 m a machine with a working height of 12 m is enough, but if you have to stand further from the building, the horizontal outreach decides, not the height. More in the article how to choose the working height.
• The horizontal outreach of a 16 m articulating boom lift is usually 7–9 m, of a 20 m telescopic boom lift 12–17 m. Measure the distance from the place where the machine will stand to the furthest point of work and add 1–2 m of margin.
• The platform capacity (227–300 kg) is people + tools + whatever you take up with you; pallets of panels are always passed up by the telehandler, not by the platform.

Safety and licences

The operator of a mobile elevating work platform must hold a qualification certificate from the Office of Technical Inspection (UDT), and the operator of a telehandler a licence for variable-reach lift trucks. People in the platform work in a harness with a lanyard attached to the anchor point, and wind above the limit permitted for the machine (usually 12.5 m/s) stops the work: panels act like a sail. You will find details of the qualifications in the article on UDT licences; if your crew does not have them, we will train your employees; you can ask about rental with an operator when requesting a quote; this is possible when one of our service technicians qualified as an operator is free on that date.

Rental for the whole installation

On halls and farms the installation takes weeks, so long-term rental of a set (telehandler + platform) at a lower daily rate pays off. We organise delivery of the equipment, and when the stage of work changes we swap the machine for another, for example a scissor lift for an articulating boom lift for the façade.

Frequently asked questions