microinverter or hybrid inverter?

Yup - lot to be said for micro-inverters. I have 6x panels (installed myself) using micro-inverters. Although just be aware you can add panels (up to a point) on string inverters to. Typically 12 panels is the maximum that a "string" will take on a string inverter. Originally when I got my system installed I had 4 panels facing east on string 1, and 10 panels facing west on string 2. i then added 2 panels to east and 1 panel to west - so it's possible to add on....up to a point. I should say though that your BEST route is maxing the panels as you can from word go. Don't get a battery if that means you can get more panels. Batteries can be added later too. Adding panels, while it can be done.....it's always more troublesome getting a guy onto your roof than doing some internal electrical work.

I'm not trying to steer your thinking away from micro-inverters, only to make sure that your fully aware of all the pros/cons. I wouldn't like you to go the micro-inverter route thinking (mistakenly) that string inverter doesn't do x or y.

When you day shade, what do you mean? A chimney? Trees? There is a difference as once the sun rises it will get above trees - certainly in summer.

Take some pics of the roof at times of the day and see what the shadows do. And see if you have old photos of the roof to compare at different times of the year.

Don't worry about shading outside of 9am -> 6pm. Sure it will affect production in those hours, but it's minor compared to the main production hours. For example, here is my production profile for April 20th just gone. Best day of the year so far.

You can see that before 9am and then after 6pm (where there are trees across the road) the production is mimimal. that's ok. Sure, it'd be nice to get an extra hour or two, but the main bulk of the production is there between 9am-6pm.

Aside: Couple of clouds at 12pm-2pm.

As for suppliers not wanting to touch another persons installation. While that is generally true - it's more the internals inside the house that they tend to care more about. What's on the roof is (generally) more standard. If anything Micro-inverters would be the lesser known of the two. 90%+ of installations in Ireland are string inverters. Again, I'm not saying that to dissuade you away from Micro-inverters (I've used 6 of them myself on my shed installation - good devices), but just want for you to be fully aware, so that your not basing your decision on false assumptions.

It's hard for people to give advice as we don't know your roof layout (perhaps screenshot a picture from google earth?), but without seeing it.....I'd probably go with a string inverter and maximise 2 of your roofs. 1 string for each roof and then run that for a year. Then after that time I'd look at your production verses need (consumption) and decide if you want to go the extra roof. That one I do with micro-inverters - but again, it's difficult to know

You could probably do something like......

String 1 would have both the west facing roofs (as they are all facing the same way, they can be on the same string), and then string2 could host the south by south east ones. Without dimensions (not that I want them)....I'm eyeballing the number of panels you can fit. But a string inverter would have no issues with that config. 12 being the panel limit on a string - but it does depend on the inverter and the panels. Some of them you can only have 10 or 11 panels for voltage reasons.

You also have a lot of land, might be worth considering a ground mounted array to the north of the house? Google earth is great, but of course it doesn't give an appreciation for the height of the trees.

Taking a step back, seems like you're torn on the decision of string inverters V micro. Or are you comfortable with using string one now? Micro inverters are good in some cases but often for smaller DIY setups. As Bullit has said. You’ve a huge roof and space around for ground mounts. I’d suggest strings are the better setup for you. Then once that decision is made in your mind, you can focus on getting a design that works for you. The vast majority of people here have string inverters (for good reasons) and that’s what the installers use by default. Micro inverters would be great for my retired folks who have low usage and don’t want to fork out a lot.  

In case it helps, my roof is somewhat similar. I’ve panels on E, W and S. On E it's on 2 roofs - main roof. Plus flat roof,, which is only one with optimisers due so shading that moves during the day. We get solar from very early to very late in the brightest months. 

If shading is an issue, there are options with string inverters. Optimisers for the shaded ones (assuming parts of the string suffer shade during the peak sunshine hours). Or you can get a 2nd inverter (I’ve 2). So then you can have up to 4 strings and if one is shaded it won’t impact the other strings. You’ll need to challenge installers based on my experience as they want an easy life. More roofs mean more work and longer cable runs.

It's a pain to get solar installed - was harder than I expected. But I'd do it again tomorrow if we moved house. Only live 10months but it's amazing. So stick with it.

Well, you won't. :-)

Well, like many things in solar..... the answer is complicated. I know what you meant, but the panel/inverter combination has a whole load of factors in play. For example, they are very temperature dependent. The sun on the panels on a hot day would generate 10-20% less than the same sun on the panels if there was a cool breeze blowing. Then there's the angle of the sun to the panels. If the panels are more "end on" as they would be in winter, they won't produce the same amount as the sun beating straight down on it. Then there is the roof orientation. When the south facing roof is getting good production, your west facing one would not be.....so there's a lot of things to factor.

You might have 8.0kwp in panels, but not all those panels would be facing the sun at the same time as the sun moves around the sky.

Don't worry though, it's rare that a system doesn't do what it's designed to do. if you get in 7Kwp of panels with (say) a 5Kw inverter, you'll most likely get that 5kw for a large amount of months.

Go back to basics though. Look at your bills, see how much your using , then see what kind of system you'll need via

JRC Photovoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS) - European Commission (europa.eu)

That's exactly it Mighty.

The sun is generally in the south, so if your panels were facing due south on your roof, you'd have an "Azimuth" of 0 as "0" = south on that website. If your panels were facing "south east", you would have an Azimuth of "-45" and if they were facing West it would be "+90". Unfortunately that site doesn't have a way to enter in two separate solar arrays in the same calculation, so you have to do each roof separately and outside of the website add up the values.

I know from doing it previously it will be within 10% less, but still....if you want a more accurate result that's how you do it.

If you had all your 7Kwp in panels facing south and the sun was actually in the south, then yes, your inverter would be a bottleneck if it's only 5Kw as that's the maxiumum that it will process ... for lack of a better word.

However in your case, you have two roofs with panels. Some of your panels facing south, and some of your panels facing west. When the south facing ones are at max power, the west facing ones will be "end on" to the sun and not operating at 100%. Similarly later on in the day when the west facing panels are directly pointing the sun, the south panels won't be at 100%. To give you a better understanding, here is are my two arrays. One facing east and one facing west.

Maximum power on the east was at 10:45am, but at that time the west facing ones were only doing like 1/3 of their max power.

In reality, it's a bit more complicated than that, but that's a brief explanation.

Again, at the risk of sounding evasive.....it's complicated - and to explain all the details would take pages of text. It's a lot to do with temperature on the day, the angle of the sun above the horizon and not just the azimuth (south/south west) above which you have in the picture, the slope of your roof etc. the haze in the atmosphere. etc etc. etc.

For example, above in my chart for East/West production. Perfect blue skies day. You can note the maximum for my west array was 3.4Kw ....even though I actually have 4.18Kwp in panels. Similarly on the east array I have 2.28Kwp in panels, and yet the max I got was 1.7kwp even when the sun was shining directly onto the roof.

In reality with 7Kwp in panels, even if you had an unlimited inverter, there would only be a few days a year where you'd get all 7Kw in production. With a 5kw inverter, you will be "clipped" for a small time on the glorious days, but overall you'll lose only 2-3% of your overall output. Nothing to worry about.

As it turned out, I did run the numbers on it before. Worked out about €30/year in the difference in production that you'd miss between a 5Kw and a 6kw inverter. Ballpark. The math is a bit rough-n-ready.

Couple of things to note. The 6Kw inverters that you are currently allowed to install will no longer be permitted after May 31st. New regulations mean that you can only have 5Kw of inverter power after May 31st. If you are installed before that deadline, your "grandfathered in". If your installing after that you would be in breech of regs.

Micro-Generators (esbnetworks.ie)

The advantage of a string inverter over a micro-inverter is that you can more easily oversize the array. Most people don't "get" this, but your panels DO NOT produce maximum power everyday. It's a rare day that they do. So what people do is they oversize the array to the inverter. With a 6Kw inverter you might install 8Kw of panels instead of matching 1 for 1 and installing 6Kwp in panels. So when it's a grey overcast day and your panels are producing only 40%, instead of 40% of 6kw = 2.4Kw generation, you'll be getting 40% of 8Kw = 3.2Kw, and of course your inverter can handle that and you get the benefit of the extra panels. Most days are like that.

With microinverters, it's much harder to oversize the installation as ESB will still only allow you that 6kw/5kw in "inverter capacity", and since it's usually 1 panel to 1x400 watt micro-inverter, you can't benefit much from oversizing the array.

As for what you should get, ultimately the decision is yours. Nothing shot down, people like me just trying to give you the info and leave the decision up to you so you can make informed choices.

Me? I'd go string inverter on 2 roofs a mentioned and see how you get on for a year or so. If you need more power then add micro-inverters for 4-6 more panels.