Daily pv production

First perfect day of the year I believe, not a cloud in sight 😁

I think it tops out at around 48kwh in the middle of summer, not bad for April.

Tried my best but still lost 7kwh to the man, shame the car was full and batteries at 70% from the other day, put 15kwh into a fan heater just because why not.

What are the concrete numbers? This gets bandied around off the cuff everywhere and I've yet to see some hard data proving it's any more than a red herring for Ireland.

Finished on 31.1kWh today.

11.5 - battery

8.75 - Zappi

1.5 - Eddi

The rest used up by many loads of washing and drying.

Exported 0.6kWh, much to my disgust. There was space in the immersion but the system sometimes doesn't react quickly enough.

As for peak months, this was last year's total. May the best month, followed by July, June, April.

April this year has so far been poor compared to last year, although today and the next week may rescue the average numbers a bit. Totalled 641 last April, only 312 so far this year.

This paper has some data: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/325990738.pdf and this article has a summary: https://www.cedgreentech.com/article/how-does-heat-affect-solar-panel-efficiencies#:~:text=Photovoltaic%20modules%20are%20tested%20at,voltage%20output%20is%20reduced%20linearly.. Wikipedia says roughly 0.5% efficiency loss for every 1 degree hotter than ideal. Looking at my panel's datasheet, I should expect 0.47% efficiency drop per degree C with a nominal operating module temperature of 46 degree C. So the question is, what's the actual module temperature on a day like today? Clearly not air temperature, but would it be as hot (or hotter?) than tarmac or another black surface? I think without measuring the actual module temperature and thus being able to remove the unknowns around moisture, wind etc... it's too hand wavey to say "must be because it's a cool day today", especially with the equally as hand wavey "must be some high altitude clouds today". I have a thermal camera, might point it at the modules tomorrow, though I'm not sure it will work due to the reflectivity.

Course that could be explained that that specific May was stellar (weather wise) compared to June. That said, like you slave I'm generally of the belief that May is a more productive month than June/July due to the slightly lower temperatures, but just calling out that to "prove it" you'd need a good few years as well as different parts of Ireland, but yeah, I think it's probably true.

That said, for most of us, me not included :-( May/June/July are months where we are exporting to the grid our excess, it's sort of a moot point of just a few % points in the difference!

But interesting nevertheless.

Didn't think I'd top yesterday's total today, but I did.

Wednesday - 31.1

Thursday - 32.7

And check out the forecast...

So in the last 2 days, 63.8kWh generated, 0.4kWh purchased, 0.6kWh exported.

Estimating 16kwh for tomorrow, let's hope it ends up at at 37 again, April needs to catch up big time 😁

Pretty cloudy in Dublin so far

I was thinking I was behind in production from epic March myself, so I did a little graph to see, and as it turns out I am ahead by about 100 kWh, but it doesn't feel like it..... Now the only caveat is the last 7 days in March were epic days as you can see from the graph at the bottom. I don't think we will get a run of 7 days like that, so there could be a chance I could finish less than March.

3.24kw system

Generated 16 kW yesterday.

Used 2 kW from grid and 3kw on night rate

Haven't hit the highs of March yet this month and not a clear day to be had in the Midlands so far, car is fully charge so I'll be pumping most of it back anyway.

Will be a couple of month before I see the new batteries on the slow boat from China as well. Even using four electric radiators I'll not use half of it and I'll be using them less now temps are picking up.