It's been a good year for the roses....

[NSS]

... and the Solar panels too.

 

22 days of the year to go and yet today we topped our previous best annual yield. 

[SteamyTea]

The hosepipe ban may have hurt the roses.

[Ronski]

Same here, best year so far since install in late 2015. We've had a really bad November, so this has surprised me.

[PhilT]

As a new user just started on Tue 6th would be interested to know - how much % of total generation have you guys been able to use this year?

[NSS]

8 minutes ago, PhilT said:

As a new user just started on Tue 6th would be interested to know - how much % of total generation have you guys been able to use this year?

I've only been able to quantify this accurately since the end of September, so early days yet, but utilisation was 84.8% in October and 89.7% in November. To date this month is 91%.

 

Of course, utilisation is likely to be far lower in higher yield/ lower use months.

[SteamyTea]

34 minutes ago, PhilT said:

As a new user just started on Tue 6th would be interested to know - how much % of total generation have you guys been able to use this year?

What you really need to do is get more informative statistical numbers.

So if you are happy with an hourly granularity, plot usage and generation for each hour of the day.

That way you can see which loads you can shift to best match PV output.

[Radian]

24 minutes ago, Ronski said:

We've had a really bad November,

 

We only started generating properly in late October and in November, our first full month, got nearly the same yield as predicted by PVGIS. That was nice to see. I don't know how PVGIS assesses cloud levels (if at all) but I'm guessing it must do something statistical for it to be so close to reality.

 

It's been frustrating though waiting since March for the roof installation while the best ever summer for PV came and went. Fortunately I did get some from a bunch of panels propped against a fence to assist with the development of my home-brew PV diverter setup. That means we've been self-consuming all but 0.02% of our generation. Come next summer I'll have to hunt around for some dump loads that aren't heating devices. Our A/C units look like my best bet.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Radian said:

don't know how PVGIS assesses cloud levels (if at all) but I'm guessing it must do something statistical

It takes the long term averages, which even accounting for climate change, only have a small error of margin when looking at the whole year.

There would be a difference if you looked at a 60 year old database of the previous 30 years of data and compared it to the last 30 years. But not as big a difference as you would think. The variation is what changes most i.e. how big a difference between the same weeks in each data set.

One advantage of PV generation is it tends not to be put in poor locations i.e. rainforest and high rise cities.

It also has very accurate predictions of times it can, and cannot, generate i.e. day and night.

Wind generation predictions are also very reliable.

[Radian]

10 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

One advantage of PV generation is it tends not to be put in poor locations i.e. rainforest and high rise cities.

 

I was surprised to see it actually maps the altitude of the terrain for your chosen location and azimuth. Doubt if it models next doors shed roof though.

[PhilT]

56 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

What you really need to do is get more informative statistical numbers.

So if you are happy with an hourly granularity, plot usage and generation for each hour of the day.

That way you can see which loads you can shift to best match PV output.

The app does all that for me. Have been matching it to heat pump draw for the last few days sunshine.

[PhilT]

1 hour ago, NSS said:

I've only been able to quantify this accurately since the end of September, so early days yet, but utilisation was 84.8% in October and 89.7% in November. To date this month is 91%.

 

Of course, utilisation is likely to be far lower in higher yield/ lower use months.

that's really good. Do you have a heat pump? How do get it so high in the summer?

[SteamyTea]

39 minutes ago, PhilT said:

The app does all that for me.

Sounds like it was properly designed, by a real engineer.

[NSS]

4 hours ago, PhilT said:

that's really good. Do you have a heat pump? How do get it so high in the summer?

As I said, likely to be far lower in summer, but we do have a PV diverter to the immersion heater and when it's really hot weather the heat pump cools the floor slab rather than heating it. I'm looking forward to seeing how much (or little) they actually consume.

Edited December 11, 2022 by NSS