Solar module prices reached a new low this week, says Leen van Bellen, business development manager Europe for Search4Solar, a European purchasing and selling platform for solar products. He tells pv magazine that prices will remain low in the short term.
All the new houses around here with no solar would indicate that is not true. They’re not even required to have a south facing roof.
At least here in California, having solar panels on a non south facing roof usually only reduces production by 10-20%, as long as it’s not entirely north facing. Solar systems are often slightly undersized - it’s more cost effective to size it so it handles average load rather than the summer peaks you only see for a few weeks per year - so the actual difference for a given system may be less.
With my system, I see the best output from south-east facing panels since they get the morning sun. West facing panels are also fairly popular here due to time-of-use electricity plans. Some electricity plans have peak pricing from 4 to 9 pm, so people want to try and collect as much sunlight as possible during that period before sunset.