i am on grid. this is mostly a hobby for me, an expensive one at that! currently am going to batteries, but may grid tie some day.
i found my chart, i think it will help me lay out multi arrays...on one axis it has solar elevation, on the other it has solar azimuth. then there are lines (bell curves) for each month to show the compass direction and solar elevation per hr of day per month. i believe you enter your lat/long and it gives you a chart per location. you stand at your array location, face the compass direction, and then use an angle finder and if you see obstructions, it will shade the array. you plot that point on the graph, then connect the dots and it will tell you your shading times.
feb through november, i have pretty much no shading from 9am on. jan and december on the other hand, i am only CLEAR from 10am to 2pm. i think i can use this to make some shadow drawings on the array layout as suggested.
on top of balancing the need for seasonal/daily tracking, i need to use a layout that doesn't sprawl all over the yard! i'm sure i am going to have to compromise somewhere.