groar's solar panels thread
 

During last two days, 3kWc of solar panels have been installed on our roof.

Edit: here is its yearly and monthly production since 2008/11/21:
http://www.bdpv.fr/graphique/product...raphique=petit
http://www.bdpv.fr/graphique/product...raphique=petit
http://www.bdpv.fr/graphique/product...21&an_act=2008

Misc data :

• Surface : 23.37 m² (3.64 x 7.53).
• 25 poly crystalline panels of 120W (+/-3%) each.
• The irradiation is around 1428 kWh/m²/year.
• The panels should generate 3170kWh/year.
• Panels' efficiency is guaranteed at 80% for 25 years.
• The panels are used for watertightness of the roof.
• Aeration at top and bottom sides permit to cool down the panels.
• Panels organized into two strings (12/13)
• The inverter has 2 independent trackers to manage the two asymmetric strings.

The system has not been switched on as when connected to the internal network, the circuit breaker opens. It seams I have a problem on my internal network :(

Next step in a few weeks/months/... when ERDF, to whom I will sale my production, will connect to my inverter :)

Costs :

• Panels + inverter costs (material + install) : 22k€
• ERDF install cost : 600€
• Government aid : 8k€ in 1 year
• Sale price : ~0.57€/kWh, ie around 1800€/year
• Taxes : 60€/year to ERDF and 40€/year to government
• Inverter : 1500€ every 10years

The project should have paid for itself in 10 years.
Loan : 8k€ for 10 years at 2% : monthly payment = 75€

Notes :

• The high sale price is because the panels are integrated to the house, here they permit the watertightness of the roof. Else it would have been 0.33€/kWh. These prices are guaranteed during 20 years for all sale contracts signed before the end of the year. Next year, new contracts will be signed with sale prices gone down...
• The government aid is valid for all install done before end of 2009. It covers a part of the material price. For photovoltaïc it's 50% of the material price. This amount is limited to 4000€ by adult and 200€ by children. It's limited in time for the period 2006-2009 for all the ecological projects. In this single project we are using all our possible ecological government aid.
• The loan has a small interest rate as this is a "validated" ecological project, else it would have been 7%.

(unsorted) pictures are here : Album: install

Denis.

Nice install. I like how its integrated into the roof. Keep us updated on the progress.

BTW, what is ERDF?

EDF (Électricité de France) is the governmental company producing and selling electricity. There exist a few other companies since a few years but EDF is always the main one.

ERDF (Électricité Réseau de Distribution de France) is the company who manages the distribution network of electricity, ie the grid. Its length is about 1.2 million of kms = 0.75 million miles. ERDF is currently a subsidiary company of EDF.

Currently I have a contract with EDF as a buyer.

To sell, I will have a contract directly with ERDF. They'll create a new connection from the grid directly to my inverter through 2 meters : one to count how much I sell and one to count how much I use from this line.

Denis.

I'm a producer, at least...
 

You know what ? I'm happy :)

ERDF installed his counters Wednesday and the panels' reseller connected the inverter to the counters one hour ago :cool:

So the counters are increasing... By now : 235 Wh in 53 minutes (weather is very cloudy) and I'm saving CO2 (400kg/yr) and uranium :thumbup:

A few additional photos later...
and I have to change my sig ;)

Denis.

Awesome! Definitely keep us up to date on this. :)

Connection photos
 

Two months (*) after the PV installation, ERDF (in fact private electricians mandated by them) came to install different counters :
http://www.groar.org/EcoRenovator/pv...cf1880.med.jpg
Above from right to left :

• my consumption counter owned by EDF, not connected to the PV installation
• my selling counter owned by ERDF, with the telereport box on its right so they can ask the counters from the street
• my consumption counter owned by ERDF, with the main switch on its right

Under is a big box with big fuses inside. On that box is written 200A/60A.

(*) It seams that in my region half people installed during the 3 months before my installation are always not connected... so I will not complain about this 2 months delay.

Then Friday the inverter got connected to ERDF's system :thumbup:
http://www.groar.org/EcoRenovator/pv...cf1885.med.jpg

and after a few minutes to pass the initial auto-configuration, the inverter was producing some electricity :cool:
http://www.groar.org/EcoRenovator/pv...cf1890.med.jpg
(sorry for the poor quality of this photo)
Puissance sortie = Power out

The green LED and the 8 LED on its right are lighten proportionally to the production. At that moment only 265 W was produced, while the installation's nominal production is 3 kW, so only one LED was lit.
On the left of the green LED is a red LED which means the inverter isn't producing electricity when it's lit.

Here are more photos with captions : Album: connection in high resolution.

Next, the first figures...

Denis.

First figures
 

Here are a few figures, noted this after noon (second day) during very cloudy weather :

• Power out : 122 W
• Total production : 1.719 kWh
• Day production : 1148 Wh
• Network tension : 233 V
• Network current : 0.88 A
• Network frequency : 49.98 Hz
• Network impedance : 0.3 Ohm
• PV Tension : #1 212 V / #2 197 V
• PV Current : #1 0.4 A / #2 0.3 A

Maximum values :

• Out AC : 677 W - 3.394 A - 238 V
• Entry 1 : 421 W - 1.835 A - 279 V
• Entry 2 : 396 W - 1.877 A - 260 V

I have 25 panels. One of inverter's entry has a string of 12 and the other a string of 13. Each entry has an independent tracker, maximizing current production from PV.

Next, the daily/monthly/yearly productions...

Denis.

Daily/monthly/yearly productions
 

I will regularly update this message with :

• daily production until 2008/11/30
• monthly production from 2008/12
• yearly production once a year

I will also log my monthly production there :
http://www.bdpv.fr/image/logo_bdpv_carre.jpg
You'll be able to see pretty graphs there :cool:

Here is my daily production until 2008/11/30 :

• Wh(I) : daily production by inverter (Wh)
• kWh(I) : Total production by inverter (kWh)
• kWh(R) : Total production by reselling counter (kWh)

Day	Wh(I)	kWh(I)	kWh(R)
21	571	0.571	0
22	1234	1.805	1
23	2370	4.175	4
24	3362	7.537	8
25	532	8.069	8
26	879	8.948	9
27	2366	11.314	12
28	4146	15.460	16
29	774	16.234	17
30	1984	18.218	19

Notes :

• 11/24: Fun, the total production reselling counter is going faster than the inverter :)
• 11/29: The reselling counter was displaying 17kWh while the inverter wasn't at 16 yet, ie a 6% bonus :)
• 11/30: 2008/11 (9.5 days) average : 1.9 kWh = 0h38 of 3 kWc and 53% of 3.6 kWh (November forecast).

Here is my monthly production since 2008/11/21 :

Period	kWh(I)	kWh(R)	Wh(R)/day	Forecast	%over forecast	Wh(I) min	Wh(I) max
2008/11 (21-30)	18	19	1900	4.10	-53.66%	532	4146
2008/12	55	58	1871	2.97	-36.96%	232	3627
2009/01	59	65	2097	3.39	-38.10%	74	4604
2009/02	131	143	5107	5.25	-2.72%	823	8173
2009/03	241	261	8419	8.55	-1.51%	1327	11753
2009/04	237	253	8433	10.87	-22.39%	1254	13792
2009/05	325	344	11097	12.35	-10.18%	3432	15270
2009/06	349	378	12600	13.47	-6.44%	2619	15575
2009/07	346	379	12226	14.23	-14.06%	5967	13916
2009/08	303	333	10742	12.26	-12.37%	xxx	xxx
Total	2064	2233	7863	9.10	-13.58%	74	15575

Denis.

Ohh, daily updates. I look forward to it!

Forecast production
 

Here is the forecast production for my PV solar panels system in kWh per month/day :
From EDF's 2007 yearly report, here are the CO2 & radioactive wastes generated by kWh produced in 2007 :

• CO2 : 59.1 g/kWh
• long life (>100,000 years) : 0.9 mg/kWh
• short life (<300 years) : 10.0 mg/kWh

Looking at EDF's monthly reports, here are the CO2 generated in g/kWh :
As you can see they are fluctuating a lot...
From a 2005 study, this is because they are mainly using coal power plant (900 gCO2/kWh) to reply to quickly fluctuating demand. While European average is at 340 gCO2/kWh, the French production can be separated by use :

• heating : 180 gCO2/kWh (129-261)
• lightning : 100 gCO2/kWh (64-151)
• intermittent use : 60 gCO2/kWh (38-93) (cooking, washing...)
• continuous use : 40 gCO2/kWh (20-72) (cold, cooling...)

Based upon EDF's 2007 yearly report, our 3kWc photo-voltaic solar panels should save :

• CO2 : 187 kg/yr
• long life radioactive wastes : 2.85 g/yr
• short life radioactive wastes : 31.7 g/yr

The reselling price is currently at 0.57187€/kWh, so the income for the first year should be around 1813€ (2284$ at 1,2595$/€).

Denis.

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).

This isn't a typo :cool:

I'm buying electricity at the following rates :

• 0.0673€/kWh in off peak hours (10:30 PM to 6:30 AM in my region) and
• 0.1106€/kWh in peak hours.

I'm selling all the electricity I'm producing at the following rates (I signed my contract in Nov. 2008) :

• 0.31193€/kWh for non-integrated installations and
• 0.57187€/kWh for integrated installations.

Our system is integrated as it permits a faster pay back, add a real value to the house and we didn't had 25m² (225 sqft) in the garden without any shade. The pay back is important as this is a very big investment (our biggest one after the house) and we don't want to block our other projects during too long, the credit tax helps too.

The selling rates are changed every year and are based upon 2 price indexes, 1 of which is based upon energy price. The integrated rate was 0.55€/kWh 2 years ago, so it's a 2%/year increase. For all contracts signed before end of 2009, these rates are reactuated every year based upon these 2 price indexes during 20 years.
The rates for contracts signed after 2009 are unknown as the law is for the 2006-2009 period. We don't know what ERDF (who's buying my production) will do in 20 years (continue or not to buy and at which rates), but by then the installation will have been refunded (nearly twice) so free & clean electricity will be great.

These rates are high in France as all European countries will have to have a certain percentage of renewable energy in 2012 and we are late compare to other countries.

Denis.

Not asked to me but as I have it, here is my raw production (in blue) since connection and the average on the last 7 days (in red) :
http://ecorenovator.org/forum/attach...8&d=1234458402
The 6 consecutive days at zero were the week far from home, so I couldn't note the production. I only know there has been 15.4 kWh in 6 days with 3.4 kWh the last day.
The day at near zero was the blackout day.

The summer should be more stable when there isn't any cloud. In fact the luminosity can vary a lot depending on the kind of clouds.

Even if today was a bad day (only half the forecast production for a February day), the max instantaneous power has been beaten from 1.768 kW to 1.835 kW : a hole in a cloud :cool:

Denis.

Thanks to a simple assembly (see http://ecorenovator.org/forum/conser...nsumption.html), bought already made as I don't know how to use an iron... :o I will be able to monitor my PV production.

Currently I'm just testing it so I'm logging the raw data in a flat file then transcode and graph them through several scripts and the rrdtool database. Even if this assembly may be useful only on French meters, I'll post my scripts when they'll be of better quality, ie usable without having to be reverse engineered.

Here are the hourly productions (Wh) for these two days calculated from raw data :

Hours	2009-02-20	2009-02-21
07-08	0	0
08-09	12	24
09-10	57	183
10-11	283	394
11-12	803	781
12-13	1217	1159
13-14	1393	1424
14-15	1451	1457
15-16	1366	1259
16-17	1083	920
17-18	593	363
18-19	20	14
19-20	0	0

Here are the graphs for the 2 consecutive days monitored :

• The instantaneous intensity (Amperes) :

http://www.groar.org/EcoRenovator/te...F-36-IINST.png

• The instantaneous appearing power (Volt.Amperes) :

http://www.groar.org/EcoRenovator/te...DF-36-PAPP.png

• The production (Wh) :

http://www.groar.org/EcoRenovator/te...DF-36-BASE.png

See comments in this message about the pro/cons of these data right under respective graphs.

The first day was very cold so everything was frozen during the first hours. The difference is important before 11AM. During the second day some clouds were crossing the sky, so the curves are more erratic.

I ordered a second assembly so I'll be able to monitor both production and consumption meters at same time :cool:

Denis.

Thats very cool groar. How much do those datalogging devices cost out of curiosity? It looks like a pretty nice setup!

45€ (57.70$ at 1,2822$/€, taxes and shipping included) each for the USB version, 35€ (44.88$) each for the serial version. As there is less and less computers with serial connections, I bought the USB one. This also permits me to have several assembly, 1 for the production and 1 for the consumption in my case, as I don't have any computer with several serial connections.
In both cases, the system see the assembly as a serial device so it has to be initiated with correct parameters. When I saw data arriving at 1200 baud, it reminded me the first time I used a modem 22 years ago...
Several schemas for such an assembly are published on Internet, but I don't know how to use an iron and this one is of good quality :cool:

The specialized data recorder for my inverted costs several hundred Euros :eek: but it permits to get data for each input (panel strings) and output of each inverter it monitors. I knew that such simple assembly to get data from the meter exists. If it only permits to get data generated by the meter, it's far cheaper and enough to automatically get production (yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, hourly...).

Denis.

I'm far from home this week, but I can access my graphs so I can post this one with instantaneous consumption (HC & HP, respectively Off Peak Hours & Peek Hours) and production (PV), the sum of both (To), the cost of each and the total cost.

http://www.groar.org/EcoRenovator/teleinfo/cost-24.png

When the white line (consumption minus production) is under 0 then I'm producing more than I'm consuming :cool:
A negative cost means money is entering the pocket ;)
As you can see, there has been a variable weather today.

I always have to study the best way to configure the rrdtool database (see comments in this message).

Denis.

Winter is gone, but summer isn't here yet
 

The last 8 days have been very sunny :)

At one side our panels have beaten all the records.
Sunset and sunrise are separated by 12h15 and this duration will increase until 21st of June. Also the sun isn't very high in the sky at midday, so the max instantaneous has been around 1850W while panels' max is 3000.

Here are the charts :
http://www.groar.org/EcoRenovator/te...2_20090323.png
HP: Peak Hours (06h30-22h30) / HC: Off Peak Hours (22h30-06h30)

Here are the numbers :

Day	Production	HC Cons.	HP Cons.	% of Prod. vs Cons.
Mon	11179	9056	12878	50.97%
Tue	11196	10289	12283	49.60%
Wed	10883	9457	13261	47.90%
Thu	11106	11198	10142	52.04%
Fri	11682	8080	9550	66.26%
Sat	11969	10340	11175	55.63%
Sun	11987	9630	13981	50.77%
Mon	11685	9777	11017	56.19%
Total	91687	77827	94287	53.27%

Note: the Mars' average forecast is 8.5kWh/day.
The best production day is Sunday ;) it was also the coldest day, so the panels' efficiency was higher.

At the other side this week was the hotter, so the consumption was the lowest. As I worked at home all week, and today, I opened all the shutters and let the sun heat the inside which helped a lot :cool: The consumption is 20% lower than current Mars' average and 40% lower than February's average.

But weather forecast is cloudy or rainy, and colder for next days :(

Denis.

1st Mwh produced
 

As shown in 8th post we passed the 1Mwh produced this month :cool: despite all months except 2 not far under the forecast for a total production at -17% under the forecast since end of november :(

Denis.

Do you think it has to do with the heat? The angle should be better in the summer, right?

By now the sun is already rather high so it will not change a lot during next month. The day duration is already 15 hours long. The longer day, around 21st of June, lasts 16 hours.

Apparently from installations at less than 50km from me, the 2009 winter production is up to 30% less than 2008 winter production. While I have the feeling that my system seams to work correctly then it's OK. Now I knew that been toward west I was going to loose 15% over the year and around 40% over the winter. Statistically during next 10 years there will be sunnier and cloudier years...

The heat do have an effect : several times I have seen 2 consecutive sunny days (so the sun angle difference can be ignored) and the hotter day is less productive by a few %. I didn't note the temperatures so I can't evaluate the effect per °C.

In fact since November the weather is really cloudy. Only during 2 months the production has been near the forecasted production :-( Lately there has been some sunny days with some small white clouds during all day long, but in the end of the afternoon there have been big dark clouds. Because my orientation toward west, this means I'm loosing much more than the same amount of clouds during the morning.
Once the clouds were so dark that in 2 minutes the production went from over 1.5kW to 0 and we had to switch on the light at 6PM while the sun set was at 8PM.

Thanks to EcoModder.com - Googlemap ME I'm realizing how high is my latitude (43.6°) : only 10 North American is higher than me.

Denis.

OK, either the pixels on my screen are drunk, or this is WILD!!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're reselling back to the utility for 5 times more than you buy? Would your utility sign a contract with me if I laid a cable across Germany to France?
Would it be possible for you to have some kind of battery set-up, allowing you to buy electricity at night and sell it back during the day? Would anyone notice? Even if a battery system is 70% efficient, you'd still be making money, and relieving the utility's day load at the same time.

[ranting and whining]
I wish Poland would finally grow up: we're even farther back in RE than France, but the government only talks about reducing greenhouse gasses, energy dependence, etc., and then grants permits for the largest brown coal strip mine operation in Central Europe. In theory, the utility must buy any RE (exept nuclear) produced by it's customers, but in reality it always finds a way to not do it. Two examples with wind turbines:
(1) Someone had a wind gennie for his workshop and wanted to sell surplus energy. The utility demanded that he states exactly (down to the kW and hour) how much he will produce, 48 hours ahead of time!! As if it was possible to predict how the wind will blow in 2 hours, let alone 2 days.
(2) Someone wanted to invest in RE and have a wind turbine in their yard. They asked the proper department for a permit to put up a tower. The answer was "We do not see a need for a wind turbine, since your property is already connected to the grid."
Go figure. Then bang your head on wall. In the usual spot.
Sorry about the ranting and whining, I'm just pissed at my government.
[/ranting and whining]

That's it. This is because European Union asks all European countries to have a certain percentage of renewable energy. I don't know about Germany, except PV is much more present there than in France. I know that main European help stopped for Spain and Italy and selling price has dropped dramatically for new installations, lowering the number of new installations. Current French rates are known for new installations until end of 2009. For 2010 the rates are always unknown and the incentives may be lowered by 20%.

My selling contract is limited in number of kWh sold by year. Nobody in France should be able to achieve such an amount. They know exactly all the details of my installation and could detect if my system works "too well". They can get the value of my selling counter whenever they want from the street without having to enter my property. Their selling counter also has a system that is able to detect if I'm directly reselling electricity that I'm buying to them.

About such an "hypothetical" system, to add 10% to my production would earn 170€/year.
You would have to use a battery with a capacity of a car battery for it to last at least one year. It would cost 50€.
You would also need an inverter that is able to do 12V DC to 220V 50Hz AC which is able to feed a synchronized current with the grid. The smallest I know costs 600€ and needs much higher voltages to work.
You would also need to design a system to limit the additional power, the best would be proportional to the power you generate. This would be priceless ;)

In France lots of wind turbine projects are stopped for bad reasons : noise, "cancer"... and some cities prevent PV when they can be seen from the street !!! :(
In Spain in April the consumption lowered by 15%. They mainly disconnected the wind turbines because stopping nuclear or coal plants is too complicated :mad:

Denis.

Bumping for an update.
Groar, how has your PV installation been doing during the summer months?

Thanks to wake me up ;)

Just added June to August production figures in post #8. As you can see in posts #8 and #1, the best production was in June : the days were longer and cooler.
Nowadays the inverter is starting later and stopping sooner :( As the longest day is 21st June, today is equivalent to a day of beginning of April except we have lesser clouds and hotter temperatures.
While end of 2008 had a deficit of sun, 2009 summer has too much sun (+15% for last 3 months), a deficit of rain (only 50% of average for the last 4 months and 2 rainy days during last 4 weeks), with hotter temperatures (2-3 °C over average, which is much more at panels' level).

My current forecast for the 1st year of production is 15% under the initial forecast :(
If I had to install another solar array on my house, I would install it toward East (so they are producing when it's colder) and I would use panels less sensible to heat.

Happily the solar panels are only one of our tools to be greener and lowering consumption is another one : the current forecast for this year is 20% under last year consumption :)

Denis.