This question changes completely when your country's power provider runs out of steam (excuse the pun) and you start having blackouts every day[Local Link Removed for Guests] wrote: [Local Link Removed for Guests]Sun Sep 01, 2024 2:53 pm It is still hard to understand if is really a valid economic solution to install solar panels considering the cost vs the efficiency.

But yes, where best to put them and how to orientate the panels? You can of course just get the panels, move them around and measure them. But that becomes a lot of effort when you have a few of them that weigh in at around 23kg each, especially on a roof! Or you can use small little panels and measure like in this awesome post. As an alternative, you can also use a light intensity sensor and use that to compute what you might experience with real panels. I did this back in 2019 with a MAX440099 I2C light intensity sensor connected to an 8266-based D1 Mini. It's super easy to connect with Annex, and you can easily move it around your yard and leave it for a while to find the best place/orientation.
Here is an example of the sort of measurements it gave for a given location:

I've got a little writeup on it with the simple Annex code here if anyone is interested?