Monday, April 11, 2011

Solar PV in spring

We've had six lovely sunny days, generally warm, with largely clear skies. Trees have been covered with blossom and the bright green leaves of the new year.

The output of the solar system has increased accordingly. On each day, we've generated around 8-9 units - a good result for the whole year would be an average of 5 units per day - and peak output has been 1600-1700 watts. The total output for the six days has been more than we claimed for the first three months that the system was installed!

I suspect peak output won't increase greatly - we get odd spikes up towards the 2000 watt point, but it rarely seems to run steadily with this output - I hope that the system will generate closer to the peak for a larger proportion of the day as the summer goes on. At the moment, on a clear day, there is a fairly slow increase from around 9 am (0800 GMT) when the system typically comes onto around 11 am, with the output increasing from around 100 to 400 watts. Then it increases more quickly to its "high output" state, around 1500 watts, as the sun increasingly illuminates both banks of panels, and then starts to drop away fairly abruptly at around 3.30 pm (1430 GMT) as the sun gets closer to the treeline behind the house.

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