Five Factors That Affect Your Savings with Solar Panels

If you’re like many others across the UK, you’ve probably considered installing solar panels on your roof. After all, solar energy is cleaner and greener, it’s renewable, it’s good for the planet and it can save you money. What’s not to love about it?

While saving money may not be your primary motivation, it’s certainly a nice little extra to choosing solar PV for your power. If you want to maximize the amount of money – and energy – you save with solar panels, these five factors can have a major effect on your solar energy savings.

Energy Efficiency

Before you even install solar panels, do an energy audit of your home. This is especially important if you use electricity for heating and cooling your house. Add insulation where it’s needed, plug up drafts and put your lamps on timers to reduce your energy usage. After all, you might as well make the best use of the energy your solar PV system produces.

Direction and Orientation

The direction your solar panels face will affect how much energy they produce, and the more energy they produce, the more money you’ll save. Your best option is a south-facing roof, which gets the most direct sunlight year round in the UK, but solar panels will still get enough sunlight with an east or west orientation, or anything in between.

Angle

Solar panels are most productive when they are set at a 30 to 50 degree angle, though they’ll still produce energy anywhere in the 20 to 60 degree range. If your roof’s pitch is greater or lesser than that, a frame built onto the roof may still make it possible for you to use solar PV panels to generate electricity.

Shade

One of the most important factors in choosing where to place your solar panels is shade – or, to be more specific, the absence thereof. If there are other structures, trees or even geographic land forms that cast a shadow over your roof through part of the day, it will reduce the amount of electricity your solar installation will produce. Trees are, of course, the easiest problem to solve – have an arborist in to trim or remove them.

Size

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that size doesn’t matter. When it comes to solar panels, size is a major factor in the amount of energy your system produces, and thus, to the amount of money you’ll save using solar panels. The more surface area you can expose to the sun, the more energy your solar PV system can produce. That, of course, is also modified by the type of solar panels you choose – monocrystalline panels produce more electricity than the same size mutlicrystalline panels, for example.

If you’re considering installing solar panels on your home, a local solar system installer can help you decide if your home is a suitable candidate for solar PV electricity.