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.
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.
The UK is a lot further north, and it’s probably not a massive loss.
It was enough to prevent me getting “free” solar panels (while that was a thing) though, so I’m still salty about that.