I've been thinking for a while of throwing solar panels on the roof of my detached garage. A small installation, mainly to tinker/get started with solar - grab 4 used 300 watt panels locally, connect them in parallel, add a MPPT charge controller, a 12v battery system, an 12v inverter and call it a day. Yesterday I discovered my neighbor's house starts shading my garage roof around 3:00 PM and when it's completely shaded there's still about 2 hours of sun left in the day. I hear partially shaded panels can dramatically decrease the power output of the whole set and/or cause the non-shaded panels to over work and over heat. Being this is a small, no so serious project, what changes would I need to make to compensate the gradual shading this set of panels will get and still get some energy from them.
P.S. - The roof of the house (main building) is higher and is unblocked so it gets full sun all day. I will have solar professionally installed on that roof some time in the future when I'm ready to go all in. Plus the house's roof has a steeper pitch which isn't safe for me to be up there myself (and I'm afraid of heights). I can easily get on the garage roof, so that's why I'm doing a DIY installation here.
P.S. - The roof of the house (main building) is higher and is unblocked so it gets full sun all day. I will have solar professionally installed on that roof some time in the future when I'm ready to go all in. Plus the house's roof has a steeper pitch which isn't safe for me to be up there myself (and I'm afraid of heights). I can easily get on the garage roof, so that's why I'm doing a DIY installation here.
Comment