There’s something of a debate in solar land as to the benefits of south facing solar installations vs setups that are installed on an east/west orientation.
Using a case study of one of our installations at Hove Enterprise Centre in Portslade (above, total size 87.84kWp), we’ve just produced figures that show that east/west oriented panels at this location generate 92% of the electricity of their south-facing counterparts.
This is important because the efficiency of your solar setup is critical to working out both how much electricity your solar panels produce, and how much money they will generate.
Our system at Hove Enterprise Centre covers six roofs. Three face south (to the right hand side of the above picture), three face east/ west. Both sit at a 22% angle.
Using data from the inverters at the site, our figures show that the south-facers produced an average of 1064 kWh per kWp installed over a year period; the east/westers produced 988 kWh per kWp.
While these are figures from just one system, they give a good indication of the benefits of installing at each orientation. You can see the raw data here.
If you’ve access to any similar case studies, or academic works that look at this, then do let us know: info@brightonenergy.org.uk
i’m presuming this is peak summer data? What’s the comparison from south facing compared to east/west in winter?
Hi Dan – it’s data from a 12 month period so includes both summer and winter. To get a better breakdown have a look at the raw data set in the link in the piece.