Hi and welcome to Solar Home 123. My name is David and I began this site as a simple site about ways to use solar power in a solar home. I live in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The whole country over here, "down under" as we sometimes call it, is a place where we have a lot of sunshine most of the year. Many people have been taking advantage of this for years by installing solar energy systems of one kind or another, that take advantage of all that free sunshine.
The most common solar powered devices you see around Sydney and NSW are the rooftop solar hot water heaters. I had one of those on my last house, but not on this one yet. Mine used to have a 300 liter (80 US gallon) water tank bolted onto the tile roof. There were two solar water panels just underneath my tank, with the whole thing visible from the street. Large households might install three panels, while one would be enough for a single person.
There are other models of solar hot water systems where the tank is installed inside the roof, out of sight. Naturally the water-panels remain outside to catch as much sunshine as possible.
Many of my neighbors use a different type of solar power, at least those who have backyard swimming pools do. Some have solar-heater swimming pools. And since even a moderate-sized home swimming pool can hold thousands of gallons of water, they don't make solar panels that big. Instead they use black plastic tubing that is laid across the roof like a mat along the sunniest side of the building. Cold water from the pool is pumped into the plastic mat, where it collects heat from the sun. And then the heated water is pumped back into the pool.
And always remember that solar panels, work best if they face the midday sun. So here in Australia, we try to face the things to the north. In the US and Europe, you would have yours mounted facing south. You also have to watch out for tall trees or tall buildings nearby that might block out some of your sunshine and prevent it hitting your solar panels for much of the day. If so, you might have to settle for having your panels on the west side of the house. The sun always seems hotter in the late afternoon than the early morning, so the east side of the building is the third choice. Of course, if you are in a flat-roofed structure like an apartment block or an office block, then your only choice is going to be to lay your hot-water solar panels, black tubing or mats on the flat surface. They won't face in any direction but up.
We Aussies and Kiwis, South Africans and South Americans all have one thing in common -- we're in the southern hemisphere. The sun still rises in the east for us, like it does for everybody, but at noon time the sun lies to our north, even if only slightly. People living along the equator have the sun directly overhead at noon, which is one of the reasons those places such as our Northen Territory or the Sahara Desert are so super-hot.
Sunshine is a resource, and if you aren't using it, you are failing to use something that is a free gift from God or Mother Nature.