Solar panel angles

09/20/2010 - 05:13

Just read an old post from Bunterboy with regard to solar panel angles. The accepted wisdom is to angle them the same as your latitude which is moving towards a winter bias. As winter sun is only about a third as powerful as summer sun a winter angle is optimising for something that is not really there. Don't forget the solar pump only runs when the panels are hotter than your hot tank so there are many winter days of non-starts.    However I think a winter bias makes sense when oversizing panels as the summer peaks can be a bit scary so we need to bias away from the flatter summer angles, around 30 degrees, and then use the big panels for a useful shoulder period contribution. If you go for oversizing just take care to have some way of heat dumping. I usually fit a power free dump valve to the heat store tank to take care of this but pools, radiators etc are good too. Some people have separate panels for the pool but why? They don't work for you in the colder months and also if the pool runs off your heat bank you can chose to heat it in any way you like.

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