here is a graph of my solar system’s performance over the past year. Any comments?
I was just going to say i didn’t know we had a choice in the matter, and even if we did i doubt there are any that have anything compared to Earth. But then I realised that you are talking about something else, and i unfortunately am unable to comment
Thanks for that. I am wondering why there is a downward trend, is it weather related? Here in SA we are moving into spring. I would expect that your area should have more solar energy at this time, given what we hear of heat waves in some northern parts?
Hi Alex. Good points and good catch. Power demand in our summer months is low with most of the winter/ early spring demond is heating (aur source heat pump for all heating and hot water). As to the generation in our short sunny months being lower than expected, my system graphs are not as clever as yours, there is a chunk of data missing - excess exported to the grid. My inverter maxes out at 3KwH and any excess from the panels gets sent to the grid. Its not feasible to add an inverter for those few months as we don’t use that much in summer. I have attached a graph for the same period showing the trend for export to the grid
Here’s mine for the past few years. The cloudy Western Cape winter clearly has a significant effect. I recently read an article that emphasized the importance of adjusting the angle of the panels according to the sun’s trajectory. I thought this was only important in extreme latitudes but apparently, proper angulation can make a huge difference here also. For my location, a tilt increase by 10–15° above latitude (≈45–50°) is recommended to boost winter performance.
Red is total use, green is solar panel generation and orange is grid power.
We added a second battery last year hence the spike in production. Living in Hillcrest KZN where there can be grey days for up to two weeks our system has done well. I wouldn’t be without it.
Thank you. It is interesting to see how the hemispheres affect solar harvesting. Your system harvests significant amounts of energy. I like to think that this means less fossil fuels get burnt. It seems like most people are happy with their solar investments.
We also had a lot of rain earlier this year, several grey days and it felt unseasonal. Nice to know that despite that, it still makes good sense to have solar energy harvesting at hand.