Solar Panels Facing North East

Why orientation matters with rooftop solar.

Solar panels facing north east.

But if the house is facing south southwest 30 off of perfectly south then the equator facing roof is only 14 better. 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. Can solar panels be fitted if your roof is east west facing. I get asked this a lot and there isn t really a simple answer.

I would be grateful for any thoughts suggestions on the direction to face solar panels. Technically east facing panels can get as much sun as west facing ones as long as there are no other issues like morning fog or clouds or shade. I understand how the east west setup works but i am wondering about the north. Even with this decrease in performance solar panels will produce enough electricity to save you hundreds of dollars a year.

Depending on your location and roof pitch you re going to lose somewhere between 10 20 efficiency as a result of not having panels facing in a due north direction. The orientation of the house also matters. 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. If you went with a professional solar installer they probably had a good reason to install panels facing east rather than west.

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 inverter inputs. 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. If your property faces east or west panels can still generate good yields.

In general solar panels that are oriented directly east or directly west will produce about 20 percent less electricity than if they were facing south. I hope they kept you informed. The above examples are for a house facing perfectly north south. 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.

Hi mark i am looking at the option of installing a east west and north facing solar system on my shed roof that has low pitch of around 10 degrees. If you have the option to place the panels in more of a north east or north west direction it is.