NEED ADVICE. Best angle and direction for Miami?

[Techm7]

Hello Solar community, I live in Miami FL and we are soon getting LG Neon 2 320 installed at my house. My question is, what is the best direction to face the panels and to what degrees? I've been searching online and I've seen a mix of results with people saying South and some saying West. Please help, thanks!



EDIT : I have a flat roof, Any direction is feasible. There is no shading whatsoever from sunrise to about 7 pm. It'll be net metering but I have ordered 3 Tesla Powerwalls that are waiting to be installed. 11.5 KW SYSTEM. 36 panels with solar edge optimizers and solar edge inverter

[JSchnee21]

Welcome Techm7

What is the goal of your PV system? I'm assuming this will be a grid-tie system, with net metering? Does your power company (PoCO) require you switch to a time of use rate plan, or can you stick with a flat rate plan? If time of use, are you hoping to time shift your consumption (with or without) battery storage?

Will this be roof mounted or ground mounted? Assuming roof, which ways do your roof faces point? And what are their pitches/inclination approximately? Most people mount flat to the roof (with a 3-6" air gap) and use one or more roof faces depending on their goals and capacity needs. Deviating from the pitch and orientation of the roof is more expensive, less attractive, and rarely done in a commercial setting. In general, South facing with a pitch between 20-40 degrees will give the most productive kWh yields for the majority of folks. Those looking to time shift, may consider some additional panels to the West (and rarely to the East) in addition to their Southerly panels.

Grab your utility bill and figure out how many kWh you use per year. With this information, and some calculations from http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/ you can estimate what size solar array you will need to offset a specific percentage of your annual usage.

Do you have shading -- any at all -- from trees, chimney, pipes, etc. If so, this may impact what kind of inverter your consider (ex string vs. DC Optimizer vs. Micro)

Have you thought about how long you expect it will take for your system to break even? Be sure to check out Energy Sage dot com and get a copy of "Solar Power Your Home For Dummies."

-Jonathan

[Techm7]

@JSchnee21 thanks for your awesome reply!! Appreciate it so much as I am new to this whole solar panel stuff. I created an edit to the original post adding further details.

[J.P.M.]

Techm7: Do the following in the same order as written:

1.) Don't buy anything yet.
2.) Download a free but slightly outdated copy of: "Solar Power Your home for Dummies". Then read it. A newer hardcopy is ~ $20 at bookstores/Amazon.
3.) Familiarize yourself with how much electricity you use, then get information from your POwer COmpany ("POCO") about how you pay for it. It'll give you a roadmap of how much of your bill you may want to offset. Remember, a 100 % offset system may not be the most cost effective.
4.) Familiarize yourself with something called "PVWatts" from NREL. It's solar modeling software for homeowners. Read all the help/info screens a few times, get your orientations right, use a 10 % system loss factor rather than the default 14 % and zero in on a size. After ~ 20 minutes or less you'll get the hang of it.
Spend as much or more time/effort finding a quality vendor. That's at least as important as product quality.
5.) Get your roof inspected/serviced. PV can last a long time. Give the roof under it the best probability of lasting as long.
6.) After 1 -4 above, come back and ask questions here to fill in gaps in your new found knowledge.

Welcome to the neighborhood and the forum of few(er) illusions.

[max2k]

Hello Solar community, I live in Miami FL and we are soon getting LG Neon 2 320 installed at my house. My question is, what is the best direction to face the panels and to what degrees? I've been searching online and I've seen a mix of results with people saying South and some saying West. Please help, thanks!



EDIT : I have a flat roof, Any direction is feasible. There is no shading whatsoever from sunrise to about 7 pm. It'll be net metering but I have ordered 3 Tesla Powerwalls that are waiting to be installed. 11.5 KW SYSTEM. 36 panels with solar edge optimizers and solar edge inverter

if you don't have shading then simpler setup with string inverter without optimizers would fit better IMO. Playing with PVWatts model which includes azimuth and tilt would answer your questions. Good initial point is 180 degree azimuth (means South, clockwise from North) and tilt equal to your latitude (about 25 deg for Miami).

[Techm7]

Techm7: Do the following in the same order as written:

1.) Don't buy anything yet.
2.) Download a free but slightly outdated copy of: "Solar Power Your home for Dummies". Then read it. A newer hardcopy is ~ $20 at bookstores/Amazon.
3.) Familiarize yourself with how much electricity you use, then get information from your POwer COmpany ("POCO") about how you pay for it. It'll give you a roadmap of how much of your bill you may want to offset. Remember, a 100 % offset system may not be the most cost effective.
4.) Familiarize yourself with something called "PVWatts" from NREL. It's solar modeling software for homeowners. Read all the help/info screens a few times, get your orientations right, use a 10 % system loss factor rather than the default 14 % and zero in on a size. After ~ 20 minutes or less you'll get the hang of it.
Spend as much or more time/effort finding a quality vendor. That's at least as important as product quality.
5.) Get your roof inspected/serviced. PV can last a long time. Give the roof under it the best probability of lasting as long.
6.) After 1 -4 above, come back and ask questions here to fill in gaps in your new found knowledge.

Welcome to the neighborhood and the forum of few(er) illusions.

Appreciate the response. Unfortunately, I have already purchased them. The good thing is that steps 2-5 is everything I've already done. We just had a brand new metal roof installed.

[Techm7]

if you don't have shading then simpler setup with string inverter without optimizers would fit better IMO. Playing with PVWatts model which includes azimuth and tilt would answer your questions. Good initial point is 180 degree azimuth (means South, clockwise from North) and tilt equal to your latitude (about 25 deg for Miami).

Thanks Max! Just what I was looking for! I'll run it by the site survey engineer coming today and see what they say about the string inverter! Thanks!!

[sensij]

What kind of Powerwalls did you order? Some grid-tie systems may play with them better than others.