Caught up

After a very slow start to May, with very little decent weather, it's all change. 7 straight days of clear blue skies and sunny weather has delivered a total of 143 kWh, which has made up for the poor start, In fact as of yesterday (27th May) the cumulative generation for the month was actually ahead of the cumulative target for the first time.

It looks now as though the weather will back off for the last 3 days of the month, but with 95% of the target complete, it's difficult to see how the panels wont complete the quota for the month.

One thing that was a concern was the relatively low peak reading of the last week - never ever breaking 3000 watts. I know the sun of past the optimum angle slightly, but I did expect a little more. Maybe the sunlight was a little diluted by high-level mist, or maybe this is the limit for continuous running. Maybe we'll see as the year progresses. But given the yields observed in the last week, one can hardly complain.

Power to the people

Three days - 60 kWh added. Enough said. 

Shame the good weather isn't here to stay, but at least the generation chart doesn't look as bad as it used to.

Sun at last

At long last the sun has finally come out in May resulting in 18 kWh today. If the weather forecast is to be believed, tomorrow should be even better. I reckon I could do over 30 kWh in a single day, but it would need perfect weather and that's asking a lot at the moment. 

However, I'm not sure this weather is here to stay, so I'm not sure we'll hit the target for the month - but I'm hoping to be proven wrong. 

Fingers crossed.

April - done and dusted

I was a bit nervous about the target for April, with the need to generate over 10 kWh per day on average. However, despite the rather inconsistent weather the system did it's thing (thanks to several days of over 20 kWh) the month's quota was delivered with 10% to spare. 

This goes some way to show just how much a difference the improvement in the sun's angle made, along with the longer days. Suddenly 1000 watts in the middle of the day is quite possible even on a moderately cloudy day. Add that to the better day's weather and some decent productivity is possible. 

April was very mixed weather wise, I don't believe we ever had a 'perfect day' (strong sun all day) and the rain towards the end of the month was record-breaking - the rainiest April on record, apparently. Thankfully the good days balanced this out. It is not without a sense of irony that for most of April we have had a hosepipe ban due to drought conditions - this certainly would seem to be one of the wettest droughts on record.

May, on the other hand has been a bit of a struggle. As of May 5th, we haven't actually had any proper sunlight - just cloud and rain - and the forecasters tell us the weather is here to stay. Hopefully, they'll be proven wrong, but the 5 and 10 day outlooks on various websites are not that marvelous.

Fingers crossed for some decent weather.