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Solar & battery

Solar Crew Size Calculator

Crew size to finish an installation in a target number of days, and where adding people stops helping.

Your numbers

%
Crews do not scale perfectly: more people means more waiting.

Result

Crew needed 5
Total labour hours 50.4
Effective hours per person per day 6.7
Days that crew actually takes 1.5
5 installers completes 50.4 hours of work in 1.5 days. Each person contributes 6.7 effective hours a day once coordination losses are counted, which is why doubling a crew never halves the time.

Crews do not scale linearly. On a residential roof there is a practical limit set by how many people can work safely on one plane, and past four or five the extra hands spend their time waiting. A roof with only one access point is limited further still.

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Questions

About this calculator

Can I just add people to finish faster?

Only up to a point. Beyond roughly four or five on a residential roof, the extra hands interfere rather than help, and safety and access limits bite before productivity does.

What is the usual crew?

Three to five for residential: typically a lead, one or two on the roof and one handling electrical and ground work. Commercial crews are larger because the working area is.

The formula

crew grows until crew x effective hours x days covers the total, where efficiency falls as the crew grows

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