4 ms·

What state are you in? Pretty northerly to have such a big drop over winter?

• nostrademons 5y ago
  CA. It's a perfect storm of factors: we're on the north side of a hill, there's a lot of tall trees to the south of us, we've got a pitched roof. In winter the sun doesn't rise on the house until almost 11 AM, and then the south roof gets dappled sunlight because of the trees until about 2 PM. Because of the shade cover, we split the panels between south and north arrays, but the north one doesn't start producing until the sun clears the rooftop, about 10:30 AM. The north array actually produces more during the winter because it gets direct sunlight and has no tree cover. In the summer, the sun is higher in the sky, so it clears the hill earlier (by 8 AM or so) and never hits the trees. Both arrays produce the full day, and the days are longer, and the sun is incident at a steeper angle anyway. My situation is a little weird, but it also applies to many urban or rural settings where you'd have a tall building or series of tall trees that block sunlight when the sun is low on the horizon, but that the sun would clear when directly overhead.