Suitability of roof/orientation for solar

BrianD3

I have started to think about solar PV, it will probably take me years to do anything by which time there will surely be progress on feed in tariffs, integrated roof panels and encouraging solar in a big way e.g. by increasing the planning exemption limits.

House is as follows, located in a fairly sunny part of the country.

Front - South West facing. Roof area 90 sq metres. Pitch 33 degrees. Not overshadowed.
Rear - North East Facing. Roof area 90 sq metres. Pitch 33 degrees.
Side - South East facing. Roof area 21 sq metres. Pitch vertical
Side - North West facing. Roof area 16 sq metres. Pitch vertical

Split level property and the levels are slightly different in terms of both size and position which is why one side of the roof is a different area than the other.

Considering that this is basically the first time I've thought about this, has anyone got any comments, should I be putting aside money for a big project to plaster the roof in panels?

quentingargan

The attached is used in BER assessment and would give a rough idea of relative production at different angles.

You can only connect 6kw to the grid - you can put up to about 8kw into some 6kw inverters, so max worth installing is probably about 45 sqM, and best done on two roofs only as you usually only have two MPPT trackers. Probably you would put it all on one roof

unkel

That's a very handy table, thanks for sharing Quentin!

If the maximum feed in would increase beyond 6kW or if I'd ever get a 3 phase connection, I would seriously consider plastering the fairly steep north facing front roof of my house with PV. Still getting more than half of what an ideal tilt south facing panel would generate

BrianD3

Yes, thanks for the table quentingaragan. I thought there would be a bigger difference between the south and north facing orientations.

unkel

Quentin has shared similar before - from that I knew north under ideal pitch was about 50% of south. What I didn't know is that this is still valid with a fairly high pitch north facing roof (like mine)

And before anyone mentions, I know calculators have been posted here before too, but I found them cumbersome to work, so I never really tried them seriously