Photovoltaic Roof East Facing

If your roof faces east west rather than north south you have a few options.

Photovoltaic roof east facing. A system facing true north has an azimuth of 0 due east 90 south 180 and west 270. If the roof were steeper say 4 12 then the north facing array would be 29 worse. Solar panels facing east or west won t get as much light as those on a southern facing roof. The above examples are for a house facing perfectly north south.

The thermal exergy of room a with south facing bipv roof is higher than each of west north and east facing of bipv roof for all months of the year. One solution is to compensate by increasing the solar collector area either using more panels or larger collectors. For all facing directions of the bipv roof the thermal exergy of room a is maximum during the month of march and it is approximately identical for the months of june and july. Increase the south facing tilt to 15 and south facing becomes 21 better.

I did a quick check using nrel s pvwatts tool and it looks like in placentia ca there s about a 10 difference in favor of flat south facing panels over east facing panels installed on a 30 pitched roof. Photovoltaic systems should ideally be designed and installed with an azimuth within 45 of true south for the northern hemisphere to maximize. I would be grateful for any thoughts suggestions on the direction to face solar panels. 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.

In addition the pvwatts calculator can provide hourly performance data for the selected location. The orientation of the house also matters.