Direction my house need to face for solar panels to be beneficial?

Any structure that has a roof can be made to work with a solar photovoltaic system. South facing roofs are always best but east and west work fine too. It is just the north face we do not use unless a title up racking is employed that causes the solar panels to angel south.

For more info

Since Colorado is in the northern hemisphere and not at the equator, the sun never tracks from due east straight overhead to set in the true west. The sun tracts a southerly arc during every season, more southerly in the winter than the summer, but still southerly. Therefore we never install a PV system facing north as the angle to the sun would cause for very low photovoltaic production. In Colorado the best direction to face solar panels is always going to be south, or a compass heading from 160 to 200 degrees.

However that does not mean that East and West are not suitable, quite the contrary. East is the second best orientation as it gets very direct sun light from sun-up until early afternoon and then West gets direct sun light from midday till sundown. The only reason east is better than west is that in the summer during the afternoon we often get thunderstorm producing cloud cover that partially blocks some of the sun’s rays from reaching the PV panels.

Is south over rated, learn more

South may be the best orientation but it is way over rated. Think of it this way…if it would take 20 solar panels on a south facing roof to meet 100% of your electrical needs, but all you have is an east and/or west roof, then it may require 22 panels to meet your goals, but do you really care? The install price difference between 20 or 22 panels is negligible and if you can fit the 22 panels on your roof you win, case closed.