South facing roof

[eddie1261]

I continue to see this "south facing" thing in most posts about residential solar. However, streets either run north and south, or east and west. Thus roughly 50% of homes don't have a south facing roof. My roof faces due east and due west. I can't rotate my house to chase sunshine. So what would I do? (I am NOT installing home solar. Just questioning the options.) In my case, I DO have a south facing roof on my garage, but many won't. And not everybody has the space to put a panel array on the ground. So what are the alternatives to people with no south facing roof? Logically, morning and evening sun are probably about the same for angle and neither of them will deliver prime time sunlight.

In my case, with my one panel on my trailer laying flat, thus really not "facing" any direction but rather every direction, I get sunlight from about 11am to about 3pm, at which time the earth's rotation finds the sun partially blocked by my house until about 5pm, and then as the sun sets it is a clear path from sun to panel as it comes through a clear path up the driveway. Do people who don't have a south facing roof just not get solar for their house?

 

[gnubie]

My house's long edge is east west too and carport roof is north facing, which is fine given I'm south of the equator. My main array is on the east side slope mostly for asthetics, as then it can't be seen from the street. The eastern roof has direct sun from about 7am (sun has to clear a mango tree) to 4pm at this time of year so no problems there in terms of exposure. If I needed to prop up production after say about 3pm when the sun angle on the east side is getting pretty shallow I could put an array on the west side too but I get more than enough from the existing array and I could put another array further up the east side (with additional battery capacity) for twice the solar capability.

There are plenty of east/west and north/south facing houses and people here are putting arrays on them all. Houses with complex tops have panels facing north and east/west.

 

[Supervstech]

I continue to see this "south facing" thing in most posts about residential solar. However, streets either run north and south, or east and west. Thus roughly 50% of homes don't have a south facing roof. My roof faces due east and due west. I can't rotate my house to chase sunshine. So what would I do? (I am NOT installing home solar. Just questioning the options.) In my case, I DO have a south facing roof on my garage, but many won't. And not everybody has the space to put a panel array on the ground. So what are the alternatives to people with no south facing roof? Logically, morning and evening sun are probably about the same for angle and neither of them will deliver prime time sunlight.

In my case, with my one panel on my trailer laying flat, thus really not "facing" any direction but rather every direction, I get sunlight from about 11am to about 3pm, at which time the earth's rotation finds the sun partially blocked by my house until about 5pm, and then as the sun sets it is a clear path from sun to panel as it comes through a clear path up the driveway. Do people who don't have a south facing roof just not get solar for their house?

As gnubie pointed out in Southern Hemisphere it is reversed...

But yeah, without a south facing in northern hemisphere, the panels can still be used, they just never see full sun.

Even with a southern face, rooftop panels are not always facing the sun directly.
All panels installed on a roof face are a compromise.

 

[Cranium]

My house faces about 188° South. But the southern faces of my roof only supported 14 panels. I put 20 panels on my East face (98°) and 16 panels on my West face (278°). These are less efficient, but still work fine. I lose about 6% efficiency on the East panels and about 15% on the West side panels. I just sized my system to take those losses into account for what I wanted to produce in power.