[see
Forum Thread this is taken from for more]
What angle should I tilt my panels at?
You can best determine this with
SAM (NREL's free modeling tool). The Earth's tilt is currently about 23.26 degrees, so the seasonal variation in the height of the sun is about 46.5 degrees with the sun being the highest in summer and at it's lowest in winter. If you lived on the equator (0 longitude) the sun would vary from +23 to -23 degrees, so by placing your panels at 0 degrees you'd maximize the power all year long. But it can get complicated. Suppose you lived on the equator, but it rained through the entire summer? In that case you might want to tilt your panels to optimize them for the winter. Similarly, some appliances like Air conditioning consumer more power summer (or heat in winter); so you should tilt them to optimize summer production; right? Not necessarily, if you have net metering you'd want to maximize total production to minimize your energy costs. You might have to disregard efficiency for the sake of expediency; for example the possibility of hurricane force winds might produce so much force that you should have no tilt. Check out
https://www.diysolarforum.com/index.php?forums/solar-panel-angle-and-location.33/ to see what others are doing.
