we got to the campus, and we found that the dorm's solar system was going downhill rapidly. In spite of the fact that we seemed to have plenty of panels (five), for a total of 355 Watts of generation capability, the eight deep-cycle batteries were being steadily depleted by my relentless use of my laptop and a few lights. Now that shouldn't have been, so there was a problem somewhere....
But the first thing that I thought of, when I thought of the panels at all, was this: why are the panels pointing to the north-west? Anyone knows (or so I thought) that panels should be pointing to the south. My compass showed exactly where south was, and these panels were pointing north-west.
And thus began a study of the campus panel orientation. It turned out that the dorm's panels were the worst case scenario: the other panels all had "south" somewhere in their orientation (south-west or south-east), although none were pointing south exactly. The roofs on which they were found, being convenient and relatively flat, dictated the choice of positions, with all of the panels lying flat against the roofs.
We "solved" the dorm problem by repositioning the dorm's panels, in the easiest way possible: we simply tilted them up, from lying flat and pointing north-west, to lying with only the top of the panels in contact with the roof, and using angle iron to raise the panels.