A Method to Estimate Solar Panel Orientation Effectivity

In the past years, new photovoltage (solar panel) systems have been installed rapidly, for instance, in regular households. Investment decisions have often been made without knowing all technical facts and information, which are affecting total energy production of photovoltage systems. In this work, we have made a simple model, which shows solar panels energy production with the different orientation angles of solar panel. Our results show that if panels are installed more than 30 degrees from the optimal orientation, the energy production drops drastically. This result applies to both azimuth and tilt angles. The developed model is very adaptive, and it can use any locations and all orientation angles. We confirm our calculation result by making a measurement with a small (30 W) test solar panel. The model and measurement results have a good relationship (correlation coefficient, R² = 0.7). The obtained result is satisfactory by taking into account the fact that measurements were made during the variable weather conditions and over long period of time (six months).