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And east might do a bit better yet if possible morning clouds don't get in the way. How are the morning there Russ ?
It may not be a good idea to make blanket statements and extrapolate about all situations from a few. That's part of the idea behind TMY's and the "SolarAnywhere" data. I'd suggest that it's probably a reasonable first approx. to expect best performance from "generally" equator facing arrays tilted at approx. the latitude of the location.
I'd maybe add to that the idea that many areas have afternoon temps. higher than morning, penalizing westward oriented arrays more than eastward, and often morning fog/clouds penalizing eastward oriented arrays more than westward, and wind all over the place, while the overall largest penalty of off south (or off north in the southern hemisphere) arrays most all of the time, and in just about all locations is that of having less solar irradiance - the raw material that the array uses to make electricity - and thus less yearly production.
Exceptions to those observations are common, but overall and for most locations, south is best for max. generation per installed Watt.
As a practical matter, for and with T.O.U., time shifting of loads and lifestyle accommodations complicate the situation of minimizing an annual bill.
However, the idea of gaming the T.O.U. rate structure to maximize revenue by optimizing the array orientation may well be mostly a matter of doing several runs with PVWatts, SAM, or other things, seeing how much revenue each orientation produces with the applicable rate structure and going with that orientation, while keeping in mind that all performance is an estimate, probably not better than +/- 10% or so, not supercritical by more than 10 deg. or so for azimuth and tilt, and subject to changing rates and T.O.U. time schemes as POCO's adjust the way the game is run.
Once the orientation is optimized for max. revenue, the time and lifestyle shifting can then be used on the other end to minimize the use and minimize the rate paid per kWh.
It may not be a good idea to make blanket statements and extrapolate about all situations from a few. That's part of the idea behind TMY's and the "SolarAnywhere" data. I'd suggest that it's probably a reasonable first approx. to expect best performance from "generally" equator facing arrays tilted at approx. the latitude of the location.
I'd maybe add to that the idea that many areas have afternoon temps. higher than morning, penalizing westward oriented arrays more than eastward, and often morning fog/clouds penalizing eastward oriented arrays more than westward, and wind all over the place, while the overall largest penalty of off south (or off north in the southern hemisphere) arrays most all of the time, and in just about all locations is that of having less solar irradiance - the raw material that the array uses to make electricity - and thus less yearly production.
Exceptions to those observations are common, but overall and for most locations, south is best for max. generation per installed Watt.
As a practical matter, for and with T.O.U., time shifting of loads and lifestyle accommodations complicate the situation of minimizing an annual bill.
However, the idea of gaming the T.O.U. rate structure to maximize revenue by optimizing the array orientation may well be mostly a matter of doing several runs with PVWatts, SAM, or other things, seeing how much revenue each orientation produces with the applicable rate structure and going with that orientation, while keeping in mind that all performance is an estimate, probably not better than +/- 10% or so, not supercritical by more than 10 deg. or so for azimuth and tilt, and subject to changing rates and T.O.U. time schemes as POCO's adjust the way the game is run.
Once the orientation is optimized for max. revenue, the time and lifestyle shifting can then be used on the other end to minimize the use and minimize the rate paid per kWh.
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