According to today's papers March (and Easter for that matter) have been the worst ever. I will wait until I see the stats from the Met office to be sure, but I can well believe it.
Cold weather, clear nights, threats of snow, long dark grey days all featured too often in the month. Despite a few good days, the PV system just couldn't do it's thing often enough and the month finished on 213 kWh against a predicted value of 225 kWh, giving 95% of prediction. This is the second month this year that I've missed the target and the second time ever - I just hope this isn't the pattern for the year. (If I'm honest I suspect I've missed by a little more than that, I think the OWL CM160 is over-reporting, but I'm ignoring that for now.)
The killer issue is the lack of average days in the month - there were far too many days when the weather never got going and 3 kWh or less was the output. It's hard to compensate for that when a good day is 15 or so and you need to average 7.
It's a big contrast to last year when the weather suddenly turned on for two weeks and all the March targets were well and truly smashed, such a thing was extraordinary at the time, but it'd be nice to have a good week for a change.
Looking ahead the weather looks to be brighter for the next few weeks. Although this will keep things cool, the PC should at least get a good work out. Here's hoping.
