Solar Panels On North Side Of House

It happens to be that the most optimal solar panel direction wary depending on where on earth you live.

Solar panels on north side of house.

The direction that your solar panels face is ultimately dependent on whether or not your system is connected through net energy metering nem and under a time of use tou payment structure. This means that they won t sit flush with your roof and will still produce relatively little electricity. This table shows you how much energy you can expect to get from almost any combination of solar panel direction and angle in the capital cities compared to the optimum orientation. Adding modules on the north side of the roof will not add much bang for the customer s solar buck and would qualify as solar malpractice in my book.

Net energy metering and time of use. Solar power systems are very custom based on the home roof type shading and utility. An ideal south facing roof here is pitched at 7 12 39ish degrees and the north side of that roof will produce less than half as much electricity. Kilowatt hours kwh are a measure of total electrical energy used or produced over a period of time.

His roof pitch is 5 12. North facing panels on the other hand generally produce much less energy than south facing panels and usually present challenges for homeowners looking to go solar as panels installed on these roofs will not produce enough to make financial sense. A friend of mine just signed on with really big solar leasing company and they installed 14 panels on the south side of his house azimuth 170 degrees and 12 more panels on the north side azimuth 350 degrees. Since the majority of solar panel owners keep their system on the grid we can split this grouping into simply those who pay for energy based on a tou payment.

The sun rises at 5 52 am and begins directly shining on the south facing panels at 8 15. In the northern hemisphere meaning the top half of the earth globe including usa canada europe and uk russia and so on one should point there solar panels at solar south or true south as it also is called. Let s walk you through an average day august 6th to be exact. A typical 7 2 kw system would require 20 solar panels if 360 watt solar panels were used.

For example in brisbane if your panels are facing west 270 and are angled 20 from horizontal you will get 89 of the energy compared to the optimum orentation of north and 30. Installation of panels for the average 5kw system ranges from 11 100 22 400. While it is technically possible to install solar panels on the north side of your roof they need to be mounted so that they oppose the roof s slant in order to generate electricity. The diagram shows how the sun passes over a house with solar panels on the south and west facing roof surfaces.