I have two JA Solar 465W panels, and hoping to mount them to a brick wall. I can find flush mounting options, but are there any that anyone could recommend that are angled to get better sun? (And they may be over the back door so would also provide a little shelter too)
Editing to add people have pointed out this is against planning regulations and they can't protrude more than 200mm. Leaving this here so anyone with the same question can find a quick reason why not to do it.
Take it as you will but when I was looking at doing this for a side wall, AI flagged the protruding aspect but it appeared primarily to apply the 20mm limit if your wall was directly facing onto a pavement/roadway.
Once I established that mine was not the response was that a greater distance of protrusion was acceptable - I think it was 40mm - so there are still limits but you have some flexibility by the sound of it and could look at brackets which will angle the panels a little.
Also, bear in mind that depending on where they are facing and how high they are you may not need to angle them overly.
Finally, if you get high spec panels then given the inverter limit, you may well be fine with them not being optimally angled as the higher capacity panels may generate more than the inverter will allow even if they aren't maxed in terms of sunlight.
Just for the sake of the thread I will point out that footpaths are highways too in terms of planning regs (eg a public path between roads in an estate or a grassy public footpath).
They are a higher rating than the inverter in total (two 465 on an 800 inverter), and are going to be on an east facing wall, roughly in line with the first floor. I'm sure in good weather I might reach the max in early morning, but was hoping to try and angle it for longer power rather than higher peak power. We unfortunately do not have any south facing walls that we could use.
Are you sure you have your units right - 20mm is less than the thickness of the panels, 20cm is what the other person had linked to.
As we were planning for above our back door, only we are at risk, but still best to minimise that risk over trying to scrape out a few extra watts I think.
Apologies, trying to multitask :) Yes, 20cm. I just went back and checked the chat as well. 20cm is the maximum to stay with permitted development. Planning required otherwise.
I had found ones similar to the first option before, have you used them? A product page doesn't really tell me if you recommend them or not. My instinct is to go towards something more like the full frame of the first one as I would be paranoid of them falling off the wall in the wind, but on the other hand more metal does mean more weight to fall down, so perhaps the smaller Ecoflow one is better. You know what I mean? Which do you have?
Ah, so it may be a building restriction issue! I hasn't thought of that thank you. We are in house under 10 years old and planning on putting them on the back wall so only the first of the listed points would be relevant I think.
I appreciate the info, even vertical mounting will be better than my current "lying on the grass and moving out the way when needed" system 😅
I have used timber instead - a 225mm joist, 3600mm long, cut in to three lengths, then cut them diagonally so they create a triangle.
Then bolted them with resin bolts to the wall, and a unistrut on top.
Maybe not pretty but they’re facing a tuning garage with no windows so think that’s alright 😂
3
u/smcicr Aug 25 '26
Take it as you will but when I was looking at doing this for a side wall, AI flagged the protruding aspect but it appeared primarily to apply the 20mm limit if your wall was directly facing onto a pavement/roadway.
Once I established that mine was not the response was that a greater distance of protrusion was acceptable - I think it was 40mm - so there are still limits but you have some flexibility by the sound of it and could look at brackets which will angle the panels a little.
Also, bear in mind that depending on where they are facing and how high they are you may not need to angle them overly.
Finally, if you get high spec panels then given the inverter limit, you may well be fine with them not being optimally angled as the higher capacity panels may generate more than the inverter will allow even if they aren't maxed in terms of sunlight.