New solar installations

[campbeji]

Is it just me or are these things popping up everywhere?

Over the last couple of weeks I have seen about a half dozen instalations that I swear wern't there a year ago.

There are some new houses and flats etc being built at the end of our street and some of them have solar panels on the roof. One in particular caught my eye, from a distance It looks like a block of flats or maybe just a couple of big houses. The roof runs roughly NW to SE and they have put two panels on either side. If I get a chance tomorrow I will try to get a better look at it.
Jim

[cye]

does that mean some of the panels are facing NW, if so they'd have been better putting them all on the SE facing roof. would have been simpler, less expensive and greater output!

[campbeji]

Hi Cye,

No the ridge line of the roof runs NW to SE so one set of panels point NE and the others SW.

I rememberd what you told me about the orientation at the workshop I attended and as I was driving past 'I thought - hold on a min' so I checked the compass on my phone and it did seem to be pointing in the wrong direction. My phone compass is a bit iffy at times so the orientation is probably off a bit, but as you say they should have put both sets facing the same direction.

So far they only seem to have put them on a few buildings, but it wouldn't suprise me if they put them on all off them. I'm going to take a run across tomorrow and have a chat withthem if they are on site.

Jim

[cye]

if they've done it wrong they may wish to continue to do the rest the same way for aesthetics?

if there were sufficient room on the SW roof, then they would have been much better doubling up on the SW and forgetting the NE.

I've seen this mistake made myself, I'm not sure whether it's commercial installers trying to sell a more complex East/West system, whether homeowners want their neighbours to see, ....? Either way, the chances of a true east-west roof are quite slim, so we should see very few of these E-W systems if common sense were used more.