When you angle fixed solar panels, put them at the same angle as your latitude on earth and face them towards the South. This maximizes the total power over the course of a year.
Also, when sizing an array or solar panel, keep in mind that you need a panel that's about 1.5x the voltage requirement of a system. For example, a 12W 1A (12V) solar panel wont charge a 12V battery. It needs to be around 18W (1A, 18V) to charge effectively.
As far as solar technologies go, active systems (photovoltaic) aren't very efficient, yet. There's quite a bit of loss. Most commercial solar panels operate at 14% to 20% energy conversion efficiency. Some of the high-end prototypes are hitting about 42% efficiency. Technology developments typically grow at exponential rates (i.e. memory) whereas photovoltaic technology has only grown linearly since the early 1970's.
If I were to put a bunch of solar panels on my house, I would NOT go off-grid with the system: Battery energy storage is incredibly inefficient. Super-capacitors, that use fractal based geometry of carbon and saline solutions, could potentially be the winning ticket to making "batteries" economically feasible for solar arrays.
I would grid-tie my array and use the grid as my battery bank. This would require a nice inverter that operates at (USA) 120 V AC +-5%. This approaches being economically feasible with the 30% rebates in the US. Essentially, you sell power to the grid during the day, peak hours, and buy it back at night when you need it.
In my opinion, passive solar technologies are the way to go. Especially for heating applications, efficiencies of 40% to 60% which are common efficiencies for power generation: nuclear and coal.
There are some cool developments with passive solar using Zeolite materials as thermal batteries. Zeolite has near 100% conversion rates of heat. Essentially, heat is used to "dry out" the Zeolite. Zeolite has a unique ability to allow its molecular bonds to expand when dry, thus storing thermal energy. When humidity is introduced, the Zeolite releases its stored heat. Search for "Zeolite thermodynamic cycles" or "Zeolite passive solar" if you want to read more.
Zeolite thermodynamic cycles can also be run in reverse, for cooling:
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