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Other factoes come into play with the outer surrounding of your home. EG, is there a big hill that shades the property in the early afternoon? Is there a good clean line of sight for sunrise? Can you change where the TV arial is located , so its not shading or interferring with panels? As many North facing is good, and as many West facing is only good if you have a clean line of sight to sunset. If you have a clean line of sight to sunrise, then ustilising the long East facing slope is also very effective. My advice is to get as many panels as you can, to assist in Wnter production. Summer is the easiest to generate energy. Winter on cloudy days is where have alot more panels pays off. Overcast days, the orientaion is not so important. If you get alot more panels, and split evenly between North East and West will give you the best Winter production for the duration of the short daylight hours. Smaller systems take longer to pay off compared to a very large system, that does cost more and has more benefits. The hardest part is the finiacing for larger systems, like a 15kw system. You could get 10 panels West, 10, North and 10 East. That is what we have, and we now get credit that helps to pay back the system even earlier.
Also look at what is going to shade your system like Council trees that have lots of leaves in the summer and may shade the roof early in the afternoons for example. In ourcase the council trees are now a problem 2.5 years later in the afternoons and they wont trim or reduce the trees heights or replace with more frindly smaller trees either.
Some areas are limited in what they can export during the day, so a 3phase system may not be a solution in regards to exporting the summer excesses. At the moment batteries, are still too expensive for the return etc.
Most days, our 15kw system is generating a peak of 12-13kw due to clouds or lower sunintensity days. On a few days we do see 15kw generation but that is usually only in December or January of exceptional days. On exceptional days, we export about 110kwh. Or could charge a couple of battery cars in a day. We don't have battery cars though.
In Winter, we will make around 40kwh in a day on very good winters days, Late May to early July. But on bad days will only produce as low as 5kw in a day. White frosty panels are not that badly effected for the generation over all. But Moss on the panels is bad news.
Our winter usage per day is about 20 to 32 kwh per day. If we had a 60kwh battery could be almost self suffecient through winter as well, but 60kwh of battery is very expensive.
Keep looking at ideas, and there is some software out there, that allows you to play around with the panles on your roof to look at the orientaion of panels etc.
Newer panels are also makeing more per panel, so needs less for the same KWh of generation. Some have technology that reduces the effects of shading on that string or connection of panels and that all helps too.
Neil
Lally:
Hi all, revisiting this for 2026, my house is north facing and wondered (where I need your help) if this is the most efficient use of my roof for panel placement. Originally got 2 quotes (last Feb 2025), 1st was a 10 panel day system (10 at the top) and then a 16 panel system, shown below. I want to install as many panels as I can efficiently and wondered if this could not have been done a little better?
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