I am in the process of installing a solar panel system for my home and could use some advice on maximizing efficiency. I’ve done a bit of research and am leaning towards a setup with high-efficiency panels, but I’m unsure about the best practices for ensuring I get the most out of them.
Here are a few specifics about my situation:
My roof faces southeast, with a slight tilt. I’m concerned if this orientation will impact the system’s performance, especially in the winter months when sunlight is less direct.
There are a few trees near my property that cast some shadows throughout the day. I’m considering installing microinverters to mitigate any shading losses, but I’d love to hear if there are other effective solutions.
Hmm, I’d suggest you engage a solar consultant, unless perchance you feel up to running the simulations yourself. There are quick-and-dirty simulators online but I doubt any would give you accurate advice (or even any advice) on how much the trees are likely to affect the output of a PV system with/without microinverters, in any given month, or in total kWh for the year. I think it’s hard to justify adding batteries to a home system on a purely $/kWh basis, if you look at total cost of ownership over their warranteed life (at most 10 years) or their expected life (at most 15 years if you treat them gently i.e. don’t cook them, don’t deep-discharge them, don’t let them “dwell” at very high charge levels for a significant fraction of the hours in the year especially during summer). Then again, there’s a lot to be said for having an emergency power supply if your electrical supply isn’t highly reliable!
A competent solar consultant can look at your particular situation (including your economics) and give you advice. I personally opted for going small – a PV array that’s big enough to keep my electric hot water cylinder hot year-round … and I don’t use much hot water, so six 310W panels seemed about right (about six years ago). Your family of four will certainly use more hot water than I do… and if you don’t have an electric HWC, or an EV that can be charged at home during the day, then maybe PV isn’t for you (unless you live in an area where you’re very confident there’ll be a substantial per-kWh payment for the PV energy your household is routinely spilling onto its local line).
If perchance you want to “roll your own”, I’d suggest you pull hourly weather data from Solcast and run some simulations using PVSyst. But I’ll warn you, it’s hard yakka! And even after accurately running a highly detailed simulation, that’s only an estimate of what energy you’ll actually get from your PV array next year, and it’ll give you no help on deciding how many (if any!) panels to purchase or what efficiency they should be.
