if home solar panels will ever pay for themselves,
it appears that in America and I guess most other places home
owners place their solar panels facing south, where they can best capture rays from the sun when it rises in the
southeast and sets in the southwest, that way, residents collect the most power
possible throughout the day, which they can use in their own homes or sell
to the grid (if they have any power leftover), but critics say the panels would
actually do more good facing west, where they could capture sunlight
during the midday and afternoon when energy is most needed,
while
south-facing solar panels are the most profitable for panel owners, they
actually raise the demand for other power sources that they simultaneously put
out of business, relying on morning and evening sunlight means that solar
panels aren’t producing as much as they could during the middle of the day,
when communities need the bulk of their power, therefore, homes with solar
panels continue to rely on other power sources to support them during the
middle of the day,
but
here's where things get a little turn on it's head, plants that depend on
selling electricity around the clock suffer, because all solar panels are
producing energy during the same non-peak hours, nuclear power plants in
particular don’t have the ability to produce energy only at certain times of
the day, and solar power sources often drive them out of business, according to The
Times, that leaves natural
gas power plants, which are cheaper and have more flexibility in terms of
production, to pick up the slack during the middle of the day, so in essence, homeowners who installed
rooftop solar panels to promote sustainable energy are actually
bolstering the natural gas industry, probably not what they
had in mind, well the easy way to settle whether your panels
should face south or west, go nuclear!
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