Best installation option for Solar Array

[Greeners73]

Hi

I am going to have a 16 panel Solar array installed with a 6Kw inverter and a 10Kw battery. My south facing roof has space for 6 panels so this leaves me with two options for the remaining 10 panels. Note I live in a single story bungalow and there is no shadowing present.

I am looking to either install the remaining 10 panels on the East roof (thus 2 seperate strings to seperate MPPT’s). I believe there is no real need for optimisers with this setup due to the arrays being on separate strings and no shadowing.

The other option I have is to split the 10 panels and have 5 on East and 5 on west but this would now introduce a difference in natural shading across the two sets of panels during morning and late afternoon, so I would install 10 optimisers.

The question really is whether it’s worth splitting the second array across east and west faces? There is added cost for the optimisers and maybe more components to go wrong. Is it worth having the more complex setup? Will it actually give me any benefit? It may give me a more balanced generation profile but does that matter when I have the battery?

 

[johnb2713]

Could you 10 panels on the West facing roof?
I had a similar option between east and west on my install, the system designer said that West was better because it gave generation into the evening when youre likely to be at home watching TV etc. It was preferred over the East facing roof because the East facing roof could provide energy early morning but batteries could be charged overnight etc.
The system works well, we have 10 south facing and 6 west facing.
Double check startup voltages for your inverter for the solar and check the inverter capacity when running on battery, Growatt SPH series for example, 6kW inverter can only support 3kW on battery.

 

[arwooldridge]

Hi

I am going to have a 16 panel Solar array installed with a 6Kw inverter and a 10Kw battery. My south facing roof has space for 6 panels

I would try to maximise the PV power from the south facing roof. Maybe use more efficient pv panels (450 watts +?), mix portrait and landscape, use different aspect ratio panels, get as close to the edges as regulations allow. East/west only gives a half or less PV power at best more like one third, so the extra cost of the higher power on the south will be cost effective.