This large detached house is located in a spectacular coastal setting with views across the channel to France. We installed a 2.75 kWp PV array and a 20-tube solar thermal collector to help reduce mains electricity and gas usage.
The photovoltaic array consists of eleven 250Wp modules linked to an SMA SB2500HF inverter. It has been mounted on an restricted area of flat roof on a ballasted frame. Because of the sensitive location, a key objective was to ensure that the array could not be seen from the ground. This required that the array be set at a relatively low angle of inclination (20°) to maximise incidence of summer irradiance and minimising the impact of shading from the parapet and other parts of the roof.
Since all the available south facing roof surface had been used for the PV array, the solar thermal collector was mounted on a ESE facing roof surface, contributing heat throughout the morning and for a few hours into the afternoon.