Hourly production of 2008/11/23
 

I will not do it everyday, but I thought it could be interesting once.

Yesterday's weather was variable, but mainly cloudy. An average November day should generate 3.6kWh. Yesterday only 2.37kWh were generated.

The sunrise was at around 8h and the sunset at around 17h30. The inverter switched on at around 8h15 and began to produce at around 8h30, but the reselling counter didn't shown any instantaneous power before 8h45. During all the morning, the sun didn't appeared. Don't forget also that our PV system is toward the West and the sun can't see it before 10AM, so before that it's only the ambient luminosity that generates power.

Where :

• time : clock
• WInv : Instantaneous W generated by inverter
• WRes : Instantaneous W received by reselling counter
• DaWh : Cumulative Daily Wh generated by inverter
• OutA : Instantaneous A generated by inverter
• InV#1/2 : Instantaneous V received by inverter in strings 1/2
• InA#1/2 : Instantaneous A received by inverter in strings 1/2
• G/R : Number of Green/Red lit LEDs

The instantaneous production shown on the reselling counter is updated less often than the one shown by the inverter, so the first is smoother than the second.
When the Red LED is lit then no production is generated as the power received from the panel isn't enough to generate some power. The Green LEDs correspond to power generated by inverter. Each LED is at most 400W, ie 1 LED means 0-399W, 2 LEDs 400-799W, 3 LEDs 800-1199W... But to switch a LED on or off, the inverter wait to have several consecutive measures in the corresponding range, so at 2PM there was 5 LED for only 1580W.

The new maximum values are :
Bad, the In1/2 max values can be seen only when the inverter is switched on by panel power.

Denis.

Denis, those figures are pretty impressive! I'm curious to see what a summer day would produce...
Keep them coming. :) Good Job!

bump...
 

Updated posts #1 and #8 with the monthly production picture.
Post #8 has been daily updated with daily production from 11/21 to 11/30.

Denis.

Looks like your averaging around 2 kWh per day? Not too shabby. Do you think this is below or above average? I have no idea what the weather is like in your area this time of year.

1.9kWh is only 53% of the forecasted average of 3.6kWh/day in November. It's even lower than the 2.4kWh forecasted average for December. :(

As you can see in message #8, the daily production for November varies between 532 and 4146 Wh/day. Over 3000, the weather was mainly sunny. Under 1000, the weather was only cloudy.

But the day is short by now (9h11 for today) and any cloud is lowering the production a lot. In February it should be better :)

Denis.

This is cool and really makes sense. I wonder if we can get a cheap loan in NZ for solar panels.

Imagine no huge distribution network of pylons, cable and switch stations but small scale producers everywhere.

People out of work could connect a generator to a bicycle, get paid and lose weight!

Imagine in the future every house putting wind generators on their roofs, people oversizing the installation to make more money...

Wish I had free electricity!

Hey Denis,
Have you ever seen any power collection during a full moon at night?

Never looked at that as since mid-November when my system was connected to the grid the weather has been very cloudy : other people in my region has produced 30% less than one year ago.

As the inverter stops the production before the night, I bet I will never see any production during the night. If ambient light can be enough to generate a voltage, I don't think it will be enough to generate enough power to switch on the inverter. One day I have seen the contrary : the inverter switched off because it wasn't receiving enough power, it was 10 minutes before sunset and the weather was variable.

While I'm noting the production every evening, I'll immediately see night production as my total will not match inverter's.

Denis.

During these last days I beat several times my best daily production :

• 2009/01/30 : 4604 Wh
• 2009/02/03 : 5035 Wh
• 2009/02/04 : 5972 Wh

I just realized that as the shortest day is the 21st of December, we have now longer days than in mid-November when the panels were connected to the grid.

I want to see my summer production :cool:

Denis.

Whoa! Is that number correct or is that a typo? At current exchange rates, that is 9 times what I pay per KWh (I pay $0.10 per KWh).