Solar Panels On East And West Facing Roofs

I would be grateful for any thoughts suggestions on the direction to face solar panels.

Solar panels on east and west facing roofs.

For homes with roofs that face to the south and that have an appropriate pitch for mounting solar panels installing an efficient home solar system is fairly straight forward because both the roof orientation and angle pitch are optimal for harvesting clean energy from the sun. At higher pitches the difference increases. However the economics of installing solar panels on a roof that does not face the south still usually stack up for the homeowner. However under the right circumstances it is possible to have an east west split of solar panels on a single inverter input like the diagram above imagine the left hand 3 panels facing west and the right hand 3 panels facing east and still have almost the same performance as if they were on separate strings attached to a two seperate.

Can solar panels be fitted if your roof is east west facing. Tra sun and snow. If the east facing panels still produce plenty of energy from the morning and early afternoon sun the west facing panels would likely produce energy from mid morning on. At lower pitches say 30 the east west facing panels perform slightly closer to south.

I get asked this a lot and there isn t really a simple answer. And while there is some indication that facing solar panels to the west can also be. It really depends on your home and your roof but adding panels to an unshaded west facing roof can be a great move. You either accept that your output will be down to the sort of levels in the table above or you spend a little more money and try to maximise the your output with technology.

We are looking at installing a 5kw system lg neon 2 panels and fornius inverter on a double storey house and had initially thought of splitting the panels between our north east and west facing roofs so that we got production over most of the day 8 panels north 4 east and 4 west. Around the world solar developers are turning array designs on their head and choosing to go east west instead. We assumed a 40 elevation for the roof. Panels mounted on a standard pitch roof facing east or west will produce approximately 15 less output than panels mounted on a south facing roof of a standard pitch.

An example of a south west facing roof. That s much better than most people would guess and even an east west facing roof can generate around 80 of the maximum.