3 ms·

Is it normal for the panels to tilt north-south? Wouldn't it be better if they tilted east-west?

• tgb 7y ago
  I assume they are at a fixed angle and don't change tilt throughout the day. Usually in the northern hemisphere south-facing is the best (the sun spends most of the day in the southern part of the sky but equal parts in east and west). Similarly you think of a south-facing side of the building as getting "the most sun" and design accordingly.
  • bufferoverflow 7y ago
    Wow, they don't track the sun? It seems a single motor can tilt the whole row of the panels with some relatively simple tilting mechanism. Heck, with gears a single motor can probably tilt multiple rows, since they need to move so slowly.
    • teraflop 7y ago
      Because a solar panel's efficiency is proportional to the cosine of the angle to the sun, you actually don't gain that much performance from east-west tracking -- it's maybe 20-30% better. These days, the panels themselves are cheap enough that it makes sense to just buy more of them, instead of adding enough motors and mechanical components to move panels that weigh millions of pounds in aggregate.
    • pjc50 7y ago
      Yeah, the industry has been back and forth on this one - having a mechanical system incurs extra cost and maintenance for surprisingly marginal gains. Now that panels are cheap it's easier to just have more of them.