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RED Renewables - Solar Panels in Heath Charnock, Chorley, Lancashire - A Case Study

Roof facing almost west

Solar panel layout

Case Study

These customers in Heath Charnock were looking to maximise their return from the Feed in Tariff for their available roof space. A large chimney stack on the roof causes shadow, so we designed a system to fit around this.

Overview

The house has an almost westerly facing roof with interlocking concrete tiles. The pitch of the roof is approximately 19°. An array of 19 solar panels cover all the available unshaded roof space, laid out as per the image to the right (produced using our specialist design software).

The Roof Equipment

The panels were mounted in portrait format in a row of two, a row of six and a row of eleven.

The Electrical Equipment

We would normally try to design a system that could be divided into equal numbers (strings) of panels, as this is what an inverter requires. However, 19 is a prime number so we instead opted for two different inverters; an Eversolar 1700GB with a string of nine solar panels, and an Eversolar 2000GB for the remaining ten.

(Images of inverters will be added soon).

In order to avoid trying to bring a cable from the loft to the consumer unit inside the house, we installed an armoured cable on the side wall of the house, with a dedicated weatherproof consumer unit for the solar equipment. The generation meter is located in the meter cabinet

Annual Yield

Total annual yield from system = 2708kWh, worth around £1349 per year.

Annual yield by month