Pv Panels On North Facing Roof

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

Pv panels on north facing roof.

One solution is to compensate by increasing the solar collector area either using more panels or larger collectors. South facing panels tilted at 30 need heavy concrete ballasts to prevent winds blowing the modules over or off the roof fixing directly to the roof is rare as this usually causes waterproofing damage. Even if you have a north facing roof you still have some solar options. Solar panels facing east or west won t get as much light as those on a southern facing roof.

It is possible to have solar panels installed on a northwest facing roof but the amount of energy that you generate will be around 1 3rd of what you would generate facing south. Generally this isn t the best solution since these panels still won t yield much energy. Solar panels that face north west will produce around 5 less electricity overall than north facing panels. 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.

This means that they won t sit flush with your roof and will still produce relatively little electricity. Around the world solar developers are turning array designs on their head and choosing to go east west instead. The chart below will give you an idea of how the solar pv production reduces depending on your roof orientation and tilt. 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.

What if your panels don t face north. 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. Tightly packed shallow tilted panels do not require such heavy ballasting thereby lightening the load on the roof and cutting the per kw. If you reside in australia and your panels don t face north your property may still be suitable for generating solar energy.

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. Their electricity production through the day will be between that of north and facing panels and that of west facing panels. Following on from a recent feature in pv tech power volume 14 here are the five key.