Solar now getting ahead of the house load

[begreen]

We got the eGauge installed and now are tracking the two arrays' output. Today at 11am we are making 3.6KW. Not bad for January, but due to the low angle of the sun and our house location this will only be for a couple hours. There are big trees to the south that the sun will need to clear before we start seeing long daylight gains. April through August are our peak producing months. As the sun gets stronger and higher in the sky I will swing the pole mounted array to the SW for much longer coverage.

 

[Cynnergy]

Beautiful day here too. BG what size is your array? How much production do you get on a cloudy/rainy day?

 

[begreen]

We just added 2.7KW to the 2.9KW, but that is theoretical, you rarely see full output, so roughly 5.1KW would be a guess. On a sunny day the 2.9K array usually produces about 2.6KW. Not sure what the pole mount array will produce, maybe 2.5KW? TBD. I'm also not sure what cloudy weather will bring. The new array has newer and perhaps more efficient cells. It also depends on the density of the clouds. From what I recall, cloudy day summer production is not great, maybe 1.2KW from the 2.9KW array? Now that there is tracking software on the system I will have some good record keeping on this. Ask me again in June.

 

[Cynnergy]

I will! The data I'm using for figuring out our solar figures is a model that uses precipitation as a proxy for cloudiness. I am doubtful whether that is a useful model. We have a lot of foggy mornings in August and cloudy days in Dec/Jan (most of those days have rain, but not all!). I think I found a creek that we could use for microhydro in the winter though, if that pans out, the summer figures will be more important for solar.