These are half of my ten Sharp 208 Watt solar panels. They are mounted parallel to the roof (18° tilt angle), with about 6" of ventilation space underneath. There is a penalty in power production by not having the panels tilted at the optimum angle, which is equal to the site's latitude (40° for me). However, I like the low-profile look and was willing to sacrifice the additional 10% power production.
Notice the nice lenticular wave clouds in the background. These clouds form when air rises and cools as it passes over the mountains, becoming saturated and forming tiny cloud droplets. A wave cloud can remain stationary for many hours, but it is always new cloud droplets that form at the upwind edge, traverse the cloud with the wind, and then evaporate downwind of the crest of the wave as the air descends and warms up.
I built this cabinet to protect my inverter from the direct summer sun, and also to contain my energy and temperature monitoring system (right side). The inverter converts the DC power produced by the solar panels to AC power, which is connected to the grid at a breaker in the main service panel (next to the electrical meter, a "net meter"). Inverters are made to handle exposure to the elements, so this fancy cabinet is not really necessary, although inverters don't like high temperatures. The inverter side of the cabinet is ventilated at the bottom and top (with 1/4" mesh screen to keep bees and critters out). Ventilation is important because the inverter generates heat (it is about 95% efficient, meaning that 5% of the DC power produced by the solar panels is lost as heat during conversion to AC power). The monitoring side of the cabinet is weatherproof since it contains sensitive electronics. A recent development in PV system design that has several advantages is to replace big wall-mounted inverters like mine with a "micro-inverter" on the back of each solar panel (see System Siting section).
