I have seen it suggested to use east and west facing panels vs all south facing so as to increase production time and decrease inverter size.
I did some simple calculations on pvwatts where I assumed 2.4kw of e, w, and s facing panels (8 300w panels each) and it produces more kwh than all 7.2kw of panels facing south. I guess this makes sense, it is kind of like a poor mans version of a tracking system. My question is, why wouldn't this be a better option if your mounting situation allowed it? I have a shop with straight east, west, and south facing sloped roofs that would all 3 be very easy to install panels on. I realize some of the wiring would be a little trickier to connect all together and it might require a little more mounting hardware.
I guess the next question is, how do I calculate inverter size with this kind of setup? I would need to figure out how much production from all 24 panels would overlap to figure out max inverter size. Inverter size is a little important because my coop has a simpler application procedure for systems of less than 5kw. And they don't specify a limit for production amount, just max system size.
The 7.2kw of panels would produce 9606 kwh in my area using the e,w, & s orientation, and 9146 kwh for all South facing. and I'm assuming the production of the first scenario would be spread out more evenly through the day.
Any ideas are appreciated. Still very early in the planning phase.
I did some simple calculations on pvwatts where I assumed 2.4kw of e, w, and s facing panels (8 300w panels each) and it produces more kwh than all 7.2kw of panels facing south. I guess this makes sense, it is kind of like a poor mans version of a tracking system. My question is, why wouldn't this be a better option if your mounting situation allowed it? I have a shop with straight east, west, and south facing sloped roofs that would all 3 be very easy to install panels on. I realize some of the wiring would be a little trickier to connect all together and it might require a little more mounting hardware.
I guess the next question is, how do I calculate inverter size with this kind of setup? I would need to figure out how much production from all 24 panels would overlap to figure out max inverter size. Inverter size is a little important because my coop has a simpler application procedure for systems of less than 5kw. And they don't specify a limit for production amount, just max system size.
The 7.2kw of panels would produce 9606 kwh in my area using the e,w, & s orientation, and 9146 kwh for all South facing. and I'm assuming the production of the first scenario would be spread out more evenly through the day.
Any ideas are appreciated. Still very early in the planning phase.
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