HOMER Knowledge Base

HOMER Knowledge Base

Effect of PV azimuth in HOMER

I am analyzing the influence of the PV Azimut angle on the PV Production, and in a simple case, when PV are looking to the West, I was waiting large reduction of electricity, and it does not happen.

 

At low latitudes, particularly when the slope is far from optimal, the azimuth has less of an effect than you might think.  I created the following graph using your HOMER file, specifying first a slope of 90°, then a slope of 25°:

10372-01

That shows that the effect is not huge at either slope, but it is more significant at 25° slope.  At 90° slope, the panel sees half the sky, and at this low latitude there is virtually the same amount of illumination in the western half of the sky as in the southern half of the sky.  Of course the timing is different, but the total amount is virtually the same.

For the next graph I changed the latitude to 50° north.  Now the effect of azimuth is significant, because unlike in the tropics, the great majority of the illumination is in the southern half of the sky:

 10372-02