How My Tiny 270 Degree Micro PV System Reached One Megawatt Hour

When you already have a main south facing solar installation, you eventually become very aware of its weak spot. Mine performs beautifully through most of the day, but the moment the sun drops behind the roofline, production falls off sharply. Even when the sky is still bright, the useful power is gone.

So I wanted to experiment

Could a small west oriented installation capture the last sunlight of the day and extend the useful production window into the evening? To find out, I placed a modest micro PV system with four 410 Watt panels on the roof of Angelika’s atelier, aimed roughly at 270 degrees. It is not an ideal location and it spends most of the day in partial or full shade, but it receives those important final sun rays that never reach the main installation.

A Small Experiment That Worked

The expectation was simple. It would not produce much, but it might help bridge the late afternoon dropoff and give me extra watt hours exactly when the main system is already winding down.What I did not expect was the long term effect of those evening peaks. A few hundred watt hours here, a few there, and over time they accumulated. Slowly, steadily, quietly. This month, the system crossed one megawatt hour of total production this year.

For a tiny, west facing setup with limited sunlight and limited capacity as it is throttled at 800 Watts, that is a satisfying result. It shows that even suboptimal configurations can make meaningful contributions to overall energy production when they target a specific gap in usage or generation.

Why It Matters

This was never about maximum output. It was about timing and complementing the main array. Evening sun is valuable because it often overlaps with household activity, for example cooking, charging devices, cooling or heating adjustments, lighting. The west oriented system produces exactly during that period, providing the kind of energy that offsets real consumption instead of only filling the battery.

A word of appreciation goes to the team at Yesss Würselen, also known as the Elektroparadies. Their advice and equipment made this small experiment both simple and effective.

Conclusion

You do not need perfect conditions to let solar work for you. Sometimes a small supplemental system, aimed at the right time of day, can make a noticeable difference. This little west facing installation proved that perfectly, delivering steady evening power and eventually reaching the one megawatt hour mark.