Solar Panels East West Facing Roof

In contrast a north southern hemisphere facing roof gets sunshine from dawn to dusk.

Solar panels east west facing roof.

Put your panels on the west roof and take as much sun as you can in the evenings. 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. Updated may 18 2020. At higher pitches the difference increases.

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. In winter when the sun is at an angle less than the pitch of the roof the panels will receive no sunlight. With east or west facing panels the sun will be behind the roof for half the day. Solar panels should face south for any home in america to obtain maximum power generation.

We assumed a 40 elevation for the roof. If an east west split of solar panels is desired where some panels are facing east and some facing west then normally those panels would be placed on separate strings and a two input inverter would be used. Of course you cannot install east west facing solar panels on your roof if it does not already slant in those directions. That s much better than most people would guess and even an east west facing roof can generate around 80 of the maximum.

However solar panels can be orientated on any roof that faces south of either east or west. Solar arrays that are situated east west can squeeze in more rows and panels and therefore a greater generation capacity than their south or north facing cousins. An example of a south west facing roof. At lower pitches say 30 the east west facing panels perform slightly closer to south.

They would then be in the shade during the first half of the day. Split your array in two and put half on the east and half on the west although arguably you would get similar results to the above two options. If you look back to systems that were built a few years ago you would typically find them facing south says david wedepohl director of communications and markets at the german solar industry association bsw. Why orientation matters with rooftop solar 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.

If you went with a professional solar installer they probably had a good reason to install panels facing east rather than west.