2026 study Interactions

Cut a tree, lose a neighbor

Phoebus demo layout (fictitious), Marengo County, Alabama. USGS 3DEP 2020 lidar, FEMA USA Structures, NHD streams, the Day 02 right of way.

At Phoebus the trees do two jobs that fight. The shading rule says cut them, because they shade the arrays. The neighbors want them kept, because they hide the arrays. Day 05 found 34 of 350 homes see panels with the woods standing and 297 on bare ground.

Here you make the cut. Click a tree and your browser reruns the line of sight from every home whose sight lines pass through it, and the December shade on the Day 01 field, on the 2 m lidar surface. Only the rays and shade cells the tree touches are recomputed. The presets marked precomputed load from the build.

Live counts

Homes that see panels--

Array acres in view--

Field hard shade, Dec 21--

Trees cut--

Edit

Hedge

Click a tree to cut it, click it again to bring it back. In hedgerow mode drag across the ground; click a hedgerow to take it out.

Presets

As built clears only the 115 kV right of way. Rule on the field is the Day 04 set, the trees the 2h/3h rule flags around the Day 01 field. Zones clears the Day 04 zones at 60 ft. Rule on every block applies the same rule to all 229 blocks. As built and every block are precomputed; the other two run live.

Eye height

Sun, December 21

Shade at--

The hard shade count is the whole window, solar 9 am to 3 pm.

Show

Homes Fan of the picked home Homes per array cell Shade on the field Crowns by class

Picked

Click a home for its fan, or a tree to cut it.

Assumptions

Assumption: the kernel is TypeScript in a Web Worker, not WebAssembly; the build machine has no Rust toolchain. It is a line for line port of the Day 05 and Day 01 Python and reproduces their numbers.
Assumption: eye at 5.5 ft (standing) or 10 ft (second floor) at the footprint centroid, panels at 8 ft. Every USA Structures footprint counts as a home.
Assumption: outside the Day 01 field, a crown is the 2 m canopy (10 ft and up) cut into 40 m squares, so one click takes 0.1 to 0.4 ac, not a whole woods. In the field window the crowns are the Day 01 crowns.
Assumption: protected means the crown center is inside 25 ft of an NHD stream or waterbody (Day 04). Must cut means inside the Day 02 115 kV right of way, 50 ft each side, mapped only along the 3 miles of line the Day 02 lidar window covers; those start cut.
Assumption: a cut tree goes to bare ground. A hedgerow is 6 m wide at its full height and is not planted on array cells.
Assumption: shade is December 21, solar 9 am to 3 pm in 15 minute steps; hard shade is a cell shaded at 13 of 25 steps (Day 01). It is counted on the Day 01 field, not on the arrays.
Assumption: rule on every block flags a crown when its 2h north, 3h east and west reach, height rounded up to 5 ft, touches a block cell. Protected crowns stay.
Assumption: the zones preset cuts the Day 01 crowns at least half inside a Day 04 zone at 60 ft.
Assumption: north of 32.48 the surface has no trees (2024 terrain only), so homes there are an upper bound.
Assumption: the opener's counter during the wave steps through the build's numbers at 8 stages, west to east.

Loading the lidar surface and the homes

1 home sees itmost

Home sees panels Sees none Picked home's fan Field hard shade Tree shade now Protected crown Right of way cut