Solar Panel Efficiency On North South Facing Roof

The direction that your roof faces also referred to as the azimuth angle is the primary factor determining how much sunshine your solar panels will see over the course of the day.

Solar panel efficiency on north south facing roof.

Let s walk you through an average day august 6th to be exact. 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. Solar panels facing east or west won t get as much light as those on a southern facing roof. If you live in a tropical area your solar panels will be to the north or to the south of the sun depending on the season.

As an example a roof facing due south in brisbane will receive almost as much sunlight as a north facing roof in hobart. Not discussed here is the case for going solar in the tropics e g. Therefore directions like southwest or southeast are fine. Solar panels are most effective when installed on south facing roofs.

One solution is to compensate by increasing the solar collector area either using more panels or larger collectors. The diagram shows how the sun passes over a house with solar panels on the south and west facing roof surfaces. Darwin and far north queensland. If your roof faces east west rather than north south you have a few options.

However solar panels can be orientated on any roof that faces south of either east or west.