Solar Panel Orientation Comparison

How do I use it?

Type an address and pick it from the list, or tap the map to drop a pin. The tool starts with four layouts: north, east, south and west, all at a 15° tilt, which is a common pitch for Australian homes. Change the direction or tilt of any of them with the sliders or the compass buttons, delete the ones you don't care about, or add up to eight in total. Put in your system size in kW and everything updates as you go.

If you have already measured your roof with the Roof Azimuth Calculator or the Roof Tilt Calculator, the link under the result brings your roof straight in as an extra layout called Your roof.

Which direction should solar panels face?

Towards the equator. That means north in Australia and the rest of the southern hemisphere, and south in the northern hemisphere. A panel facing the equator sees the sun for the longest part of the day and gets the most energy over a year.

The difference is smaller than most people expect though. In Sydney, a 6.6 kW system at a 15° tilt makes just under 10,000 kWh a year facing north. Facing east or west it makes about 89% of that, and even facing south it still makes about 77%. A lot of solar energy is diffuse light from the whole sky rather than the direct beam, and diffuse light doesn't care which way a panel points.

Results for Australian capital cities

Here is what the tool gives for the centre of each capital with panels at 15°. North is shown as kWh per kW of panels per year, and the other directions as a share of north. Click a city for the seasonal breakdown, the east versus west timing and whether south facing panels pay off there, with the tool already set to that city.

Outside Australia? The same comparison is worked out city by city for the United Kingdom (London, Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Belfast, Glasgow and Edinburgh) and the United States (the eight US cities with the most installed solar).

Are east and west facing panels worth it?

Often, yes. East facing panels peak in the morning and west facing panels peak in the afternoon, so an east and west split gives a wider, flatter curve across the day. That lines up better with when a household actually uses power, and it can mean less gets exported for a low feed in tariff. The clear day charts show this well: switch between the east and west layouts and you can see the peak move by a few hours.

On the other hand, if every kWh exported earns the same as every kWh used, the equator facing roof still wins on total energy. The table at the top of the results shows the gap for your address.

Why does winter look so different?

In summer the sun is high and the direction of a panel barely matters. In Sydney, north and south facing panels at 15° make almost the same energy from December to February. In winter the sun sits low in the northern sky, so a south facing panel makes about half what a north facing one does. Steeper tilts hold up better in winter and flatter tilts do better in summer. Add a second north layout at 35° and you can see the trade off straight away.

Are south facing panels worth it?

In most cases, yes. The same goes for north facing panels if you live north of the equator. Panels have got so cheap that a roof facing away from the sun is often still worth filling.

Here is the maths for Sydney. South facing panels at 15° make about 1,150 kWh per kW a year, which is 77% of what the same panels make facing north. The Solar Choice price index for September 2026 puts a fully installed home system at about $0.88 to $0.95 per watt after the STC rebate. Spread over 25 years, a kW of south facing panels at that price works out to roughly 3c to 4c for every kWh it makes.

That is about the same as the 3.4c to 6.5c per kWh that IPART's 2026–27 benchmark says NSW retailers should pay for exported solar, and a small fraction of what you pay for power from the grid. So south facing panels roughly pay their way even if every kWh goes back to the grid, and they pay very well for any power you use yourself.

The catch is timing. South facing panels do most of their work from spring to autumn and very little in the middle of winter, so they suit homes with summer air conditioning, a pool pump or a battery to fill. Flatter is better on a south facing roof. In Adelaide, a south facing layout at 10° still makes about 80% of the best north facing one. Add a south layout at your roof's actual tilt and the seasonal chart shows exactly what it adds.

Two things to check before you commit: that your inverter has room for the extra panels, and how much your network lets you export. Your installer can answer both.

Where does the data come from?

The energy figures use a typical meteorological year from PVGIS, the solar database run by the European Commission Joint Research Centre. A typical year is built from the most representative months out of about 20 years of weather at that location, so it includes normal cloud and temperature rather than a best case. The tool works out the sunlight on each panel hour by hour, then takes off the losses you enter, the effect of panel heat and a 96% efficient inverter.

The seasonal line charts are different on purpose. They show a cloudless day on the 15th of the middle month of each season, so the shape of each layout is easy to compare. Real days will often be lower. None of the figures include shading from trees or buildings, so treat them as a guide rather than a quote.

What happens after the panels go up?

A model tells you what a roof should make. Whether it actually does is a different question. Inverters trip, panels crack, connectors fail and shading grows, and most owners only find out when a power bill looks wrong months later. PV Fleet connects to the inverter monitoring you already have, works out what each system should be producing and tells you within hours when it isn't.

Common questions

More free tools: find the best tilt for your address with the solar panel angle calculator, or see how many panels fit with the solar roof calculator.