solar&batteries - after some help\advice please

[Stinsy]

I have East, South and West facing roofs and am currently wondering whether to put up everything the roof will take and just accept it will be curtailed for a lot of the summer (but yield more in the winter and off-seasons when it will be most valuable.) I would particularly like to maximise what is on our west-facing roof, which is the biggest...

I'm evangelical about oversized arrays!

Solar panels are cheap. The correct size array for the sunniest midsummer day will be woeful anytime it is cloudy and will do nothing in the shoulder months. You should size your array for March/October.

Many DNO-friendly 3.6kW inverters can take 8kW of solar, If you get a hybrid inverter and a few batteries an east-west roof can supply decent power for most of the year.

Imagine a 4kW, south-facing array. It delivers all of its power in one big lump in the middle of the day, while the sun shines. But when it is cloudy you get 1kW at best.

However an 8kW east/west, array delivers far more at the beginning / end of each day, and when it is cloudy still delivers 2kW.

[billi]

However an 8kW east/west, array delivers far more at the beginning / end of each day, and when it is cloudy still delivers 2kW.

Exactly ....

As new buildings are getting more and more into the Flat roof design, i see so many East-West roofs on new buildings nowadays ( not that i particular like most of the architectural approach in the Countryside ( of those houses )
But the same Orientation might be right for a Ground-mount and those Mounting-frames are widely available , and why should they not just stand on the ground on a geo-membrane ,covered with gravel ( as an Alternative to , building a mounting frame from scratch)

Nice headline i came across in relation of extending hours and own consumption of ones own PV generator

"Is East-West the new South ? "

Billi

[AE-NMidlands]

I'm evangelical about oversized arrays!

Solar panels are cheap. The correct size array for the sunniest midsummer day will be woeful anytime it is cloudy and will do nothing in the shoulder months. You should size your array for March/October.

Many DNO-friendly 3.6kW inverters can take 8kW of solar, If you get a hybrid inverter and a few batteries an east-west roof can supply decent power for most of the year.

Does this mean that you have an inverter which cannot export more than 3.6kW (so is an easy admin hurdle to jump,) but surplus power in summer can be diverted e.g. to batteries,or is just stalled if there is nowhere else for it to go?
A

[Stinsy]

I'm evangelical about oversized arrays!

Solar panels are cheap. The correct size array for the sunniest midsummer day will be woeful anytime it is cloudy and will do nothing in the shoulder months. You should size your array for March/October.

Many DNO-friendly 3.6kW inverters can take 8kW of solar, If you get a hybrid inverter and a few batteries an east-west roof can supply decent power for most of the year.

Does this mean that you have an inverter which cannot export more than 3.6kW (so is an easy admin hurdle to jump,) but surplus power in summer can be diverted e.g. to batteries,or is just stalled if there is nowhere else for it to go?
A

Exactly!

My inverter is limited to 3.6kW to the grid/domestic loads. However it is rated for 8kWp of solar panels. I can add extra solar in excess of this by adding a DC charge controller between the additional panels and the batteries.

[Mr Gus]

Can you imagine the difference to school finances if they designed solar incorporated shaded cloisters & roofing on a N/S/E/W basis of complete directional solar capture rather than the architectural poncery that does no more than satisfy an architectural ego?

A lot of heat pump potential+, especially when facing up to harsh environmental change.

A school would be a massive earner built from the ground up where new estates are springing up, might be able to afford some new books & not be given away to a business "academy"

[AE-NMidlands]

The Dutch are ahead of us, as usual (But one of the newly rebuilt London stations does have a pv roof.)
https://www.ribaj.com/products/solar-pv ... al-station is good,

As it stands, the cells can reduce the station’s total carbon emissions by 8%, and generate 320MW of electricity a year.
Benthem says the application of solar cells to the glass helped mitigate the transition from the darker station hall into the relative brightness of the platform area. ‘We needed to reduce the transparency anyway to reduce glare, so the coating of the roof was as much about daylight control as it was generating power,’ adds Benthem.

A TV programme (Railway Architecture?) talked to the architect who explained that there is so much light inside that they have hanging vertical pv panels too!