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Wet and sunny? You must have that ideal of rain mostly at night. I'd like that.

Last year was the first time we produced more power than we used, but just barely. Made 9610 kWh, used 9603. That surprised me.
 
DNAinaGoodWay said:
Wet and sunny? You must have that ideal of rain mostly at night. I'd like that.
I've often thought that would be the ideal, too! But then I realized that would likely cause us to overheat.

I think it was more that we caught enough of the thunderstorms to keep it from getting overly dry this year. Some years those thunderstorms just pass us by every time, sometimes to the north and sometimes to the south.
DNAinaGoodWay said:
Last year was the first time we produced more power than we used, but just barely. Made 9610 kWh, used 9603. That surprised me.
I'm guessing you do not heat with electricity. We actually heated with wood pellets for about three days over the weekend since it was so cold. Back to electricity now...

In terms of our 12-month running net consumption, we had managed to be barely ahead at the end of November by 80 kWh. But it's been pretty cold since then. Plus January 2016 set production records here, so not much chance of a repeat. As of today, we're net consumers of about 400 kWh over the past 12 months. We still have 1.4 MWh stored up, but I don't expect that to last through February.
 
January was unusually cloudy (and warm) here this year. I was not surprised to find that my solar production for the month was the second worst in the 8½ years I have been tracking it, a measly 157 kWh (December 2010 was my record low production). Until the last four days of the month (when the sun finally returned and the weather was clear and cold, as it should be in winter) I had only one sunny and one mostly sunny day! And lots of snow and rain (rain? in January?) and glare ice on my driveway, a first in my 32 years in Colorado. If this is what I can expect from global warming I don't much like it. :(

Code:
Solar production for January:

		    Old Panels    Old+New Panels
Jan-09		77 kWh
Jan-10		76 kWh
Jan-11		88 kWh
Jan-12		93 kWh
Jan-13		88 kWh		247 kWh
Jan-14		95 kWh		262 kWh
Jan-15		84 kWh		235 kWh
Jan-16		82 kWh		227 kWh
Jan-17		58 kWh		157 kWh (!)

30942440833_a9efd3a815_z.jpg


^ Model S60 and fuel source.

31859760643_6deb69be61_z.jpg


^ Panels in early morning before pulling the snow off of them.

32671992755_c1c2dcb58b_z.jpg


^ My 400 foot driveway before shoveling (the tracks are from a resident mule deer).
 
Just like dgpcolorado, we also experienced warm and cloudy weather in January. Our system set a new January LOW production record of only 756 kWh. That's even below the partial-month result of January 2011 of 669 kWh (which when multiplied by 1.29 comes to 863 kWh).

The peak production day for January was on the 25th at 64.6 kWh. This falls short of the daily record for January of 69.0 kWh which was set on January 10, 2015 and again on January 18, 2016.

Below are all our numbers for 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 along with the PVWatts predictions for the old array (PVW42: good through June 2014) and the new array (PVW54: good starting with July 2014):
Code:
Month    PVW42   2011   2012   2013   2014   2015   2016   2017  PVW54  Units
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
January    916    669    869    822    857   1006   1300    756   1229   kWh
February   702    158   1085    866   1054   1361   1192           915   kWh
March      965      0   1350   1152   1113   1547   1498          1240   kWh
April     1465      0   1465   1495   1338   1737   1754          1899   kWh
May       1583      0   1477   1491   1457   2069   1574          2074   kWh 
June      1268      0   1478   1368   1521   1585   1932          1666   kWh
Code:
July      1448    595   1395   1406   1880   1823   1887          1902   kWh
August    1442   1347   1447   1333   1794   1887   1932          1875   kWh
September 1209    910   1295   1414   1577   1495   1551          1555   kWh
October   1304    931    981   1034   1258   1415   1593          1713   kWh
November   864    949   1041   1018   1227   1277   1340          1154   kWh
December   820    803    612    669    812    865   1002          1108   kWh
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Totals   13986   6362  14495  14068  15888  18067  18555    756  18330   kWh
Our system has produced 88.191 MWh from installation through the end of January 2017.

Net grid consumption since July 2011 (when PV was turned on permanently and a new electricity meter was installed) has been 14.3 MWh. Solar production during this period was 87.3 MWh meaning total consumption was 101.6 MWh. Solar has provided 85.9% of that total.

During the past 12-month period, production was 18,011 kWh and consumption was 18,184 kWh meaning our system was a net consumer of 173 kWh. Put another way, our system produced 99.0% of our consumption over this period, including driving the LEAF approximately 8500 miles.
 
February was fairly sunny and very warm here. Production was decent at 1241 kWh. That result is about 91% of the record of 1361 kWh set in February 2015.

The peak production day for February was on the 13th at 78.7 kWh. This falls short of the daily record for February of 82.4 kWh which was set on February 27, 2015.

Below are all our numbers for 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 along with the PVWatts predictions for the old array (PVW42: good through June 2014) and the new array (PVW54: good starting with July 2014):
Code:
Month    PVW42   2011   2012   2013   2014   2015   2016   2017  PVW54  Units
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
January    916    669    869    822    857   1006   1300    756   1229   kWh
February   702    158   1085    866   1054   1361   1192   1241    915   kWh
March      965      0   1350   1152   1113   1547   1498          1240   kWh
April     1465      0   1465   1495   1338   1737   1754          1899   kWh
May       1583      0   1477   1491   1457   2069   1574          2074   kWh 
June      1268      0   1478   1368   1521   1585   1932          1666   kWh
Code:
July      1448    595   1395   1406   1880   1823   1887          1902   kWh
August    1442   1347   1447   1333   1794   1887   1932          1875   kWh
September 1209    910   1295   1414   1577   1495   1551          1555   kWh
October   1304    931    981   1034   1258   1415   1593          1713   kWh
November   864    949   1041   1018   1227   1277   1340          1154   kWh
December   820    803    612    669    812    865   1002          1108   kWh
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Totals   13986   6362  14495  14068  15888  18067  18555   1997  18330   kWh
Our system has produced 89.432 MWh from installation through the end of February 2017.

Net grid consumption since July 2011 (when PV was turned on permanently and a new electricity meter was installed) has been 14.7 MWh. Solar production during this period was 88.6 MWh meaning total consumption was 103.3 MWh. Solar has provided 85.8% of that total.

During the past 12-month period, production was 18,060 kWh and consumption was 17,948 kWh meaning our system was a net producer of 112 kWh. Put another way, our system produced 100.6% of our consumption over this period, including driving the LEAF approximately 8500 miles.
 
June was noteworthy here for being even more sunny than usual. My production tied with May 2012 for second place, after June 2011, my best solar month ever.

My 2170 kW of panels produced 365 kWh of electricity last month. This time of the year my panels are at 15º pitch.

I finally washed the accumulated dirt off the panels a few days ago, given the lack of rain to do it. Much as I like having the solar production, I'm hoping for a wet monsoon season to reduce the fire danger in this piñon-juniper-oak forest.


It appears that utilities are being successful in many states in getting net metering killed:

Rooftop Solar Dims Under Pressure From Utility Lobbyists

I am fortunate that the little power co-op — 13,000 meters in four counties — which serves my house, is strongly supportive of renewables, reflecting the wishes of the members/owners.
 
dgpcolorado said:
June was noteworthy here for being even more sunny than usual. My production tied with May 2012 for second place, after June 2011, my best solar month ever.

My 2170 kW of panels produced 365 kWh of electricity last month. This time of the year my panels are at 15º pitch.

I finally washed the accumulated dirt off the panels a few days ago, given the lack of rain to do it. Much as I like having the solar production, I'm hoping for a wet monsoon season to reduce the fire danger in this piñon-juniper-oak forest.
At least you're up higher, they're fairly spread out and most aren't very tall, so you've got a better shot - out here the greatest die off was in the mixed conifer belt (Ponderosa/Jeffrey/Sugar Pine/White Fir/Incense Cedar/Black Oak, lower than you): http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-sierra-dead-trees-20170128-story.html
Even though dead but standing trees pose a greater risk, the forest floor is cluttered with the trunks and branches when they fall, allowing fire to easily connect from tree to tree even if there wasn't all the brush. Last summer at my old Scout camp (5,760+ ft. on the western slope, in the Stanislaus N.F.), what used to be an easy stroll cross country through the forest at any time going back almost half a century, in the the past 5 years has turned into an obstacle course of dead and downed limbs, and it's like that all over the central and southern Sierra.
 
GRA said:
At least you're up higher, they're fairly spread out and most aren't very tall, so you've got a better shot - out here the greatest die off was in the mixed conifer belt (Ponderosa/Jeffrey/Sugar Pine/White Fir/Incense Cedar/Black Oak, lower than you): http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-sierra-dead-trees-20170128-story.html
Even though dead but standing trees pose a greater risk, the forest floor is cluttered with the trunks and branches when they fall, allowing fire to easily connect from tree to tree even if there wasn't all the brush. Last summer at my old Scout camp (5,760+ ft. on the western slope, in the Stanislaus N.F.), what used to be an easy stroll cross country through the forest at any time going back almost half a century, in the the past 5 years has turned into an obstacle course of dead and downed limbs, and it's like that all over the central and southern Sierra.
We have had quite a lot of beetle kill in the montane zone here, albeit not as extreme as the drought kill in much of the California mountains.

The trees on my lot weren't originally spread out. My piñon-juniper-oak forest was very dense on my lot when I built my house; in many places it was too dense to walk through. Counting rings on a couple of medium sized trees in 1999, I came to 100 for both, meaning that the forest on my lot hadn't burned in at least 100 years. I built a concrete and steel house to reduce the fire danger. However, it turns out that windows are a vulnerable point: a very hot fire will pop the windows and the fire will burn the house from the inside out. I have a lot of very large windows for the splendid mountain vistas, so that was a concern.

After seeing the effects of the Los Alamos fire in 2000 — where the piñon fueled fire was so hot that the baked ground became impermeable to water(!) — plus a drought year here circa 2001, I started thinning the forest around my house. Every winter — when the piñon Ips beetle is dormant — I remove some more trees to increase the spacing. [Unlike with well-spaced ponderosas, limbing-up piñons and junipers is useless since they are pretty much all crown and they burn so hot. Nevertheless I have neighbors who limb-up every tree — removing none — and think that they are doing fire mitigation, to my ire — it makes the forest look ridiculous and is utterly useless.]

Over the years I've removed hundreds of trees on my little five acre lot but still have hundreds left. I leave an acre and a half of my favorite old growth forest untouched — if it burns, so be it. From my botanist point of view, thinning the forest has several advantages: the trees that are left, as well as other plants — grasses, forbs and shrubs — get more sun and water, making them healthier; it will slow down the spread of a wildfire; it allows more snow to reach and melt into the ground, rather than evaporating directly from the trees, increasing soil moisture. The better-watered and healthier trees, in turn, are more resistant to beetle kill because trees with good sap pressure can force them out; beetles generally kill already stressed trees.

In addition to improving plant health and the number and variety of meadow plants in the clearings, thinning the forest improves habitat for some wildlife, such as deer (and the mountain lions that eat them), bears, bunnies and the like, but reduces habitat for other critters, such as tree squirrels, woodpeckers and nuthatches. It also reduces the pine nut crop that so many critters depend on (Clark's nutcrackers and piñon jays actually commute in from the mountains for pine nut season in a good year), although healthier piñons will individually produce more pine nuts IME. But fire mitigation is the goal. In a very dense forest, such as mine was, the idea is to remove 70-80% of the trees, which drastically reduces the forest fuel load. Nevertheless, I still have a LOT of trees, they are just farther apart and healthier.

If I pushed the forest far enough back I could be pretty much fire-safe. But I have some 25+ foot piñons near a corner of my house that I haven't been able to bring myself to cut. I put my house where I did in part so I wouldn't have to cut those big and beautiful trees for the views. If I did take out those trees I'm pretty sure my house would survive a wildfire, despite piñon fires being so ferociously hot due to the pitch in them.

Keeps me busy in retirement!
 
i'm new to this solar thing. I got a ground mount system. 24 panels. 12 inverters.







today was cloudy.. so it looks like this at the moment.


Maximum for a day collection (only been up since 23rd June 2017) has been just under 50kWh, seems that everyday so far has been above 40kWh but today might be a sign of things to come with clouds.
 
dgpcolorado said:
The trees on my lot weren't originally spread out. <snip details>
Thanks for the explanation, and I'm glad to see you're well aware of the ecosystem effects. I've taken various field classes on the ecology of the Sierra, Great Basin and Front Range over the years and have read a fair amount, but I'm just an interested layperson. As such, it's almost heartbreaking to see the extent of dead stands of pines anywhere you go in the mixed conifer belt. While I prefer to do my most of my outdoor recreating in the sub-alpine and alpine zones, I have to drive through the mixed conifer forest to get there, and the sight of expanses of dead trees in every direction is sobering, areas I know really well more so. Anyway, I think we've gone way OT, so my apologies to all for taking us there.
 
DuncanCunningham said:
i'm new to this solar thing. I got a ground mount system. 24 panels. 12 inverters...
Nice data collection system. Since 2008 I've been reading my meters manually, before the inverters shut down for the evening, and later entering the data on a spreadsheet — very "old school," but fun!
 
Code:
Solar production for May:
	   		700 W		  2170 W
		    Old Panels    Old+New Panels
May-09		108 kWh
May-10		122 kWh
May-11		111 kWh
May-12		127 kWh
May-13		119 kWh		338 kWh
May-14		111 kWh		313 kWh
May-15		 90 kWh		250 kWh
May-16		106 kWh		300 kWh
May-17		112 kWh		319 kWh

Code:
Solar production for June:
	   		 700 W		  2170 W
		    Old Panels    Old+New Panels
June-09		101 kWh
June-10		117 kWh
June-11		134 kWh
June-12		120 kWh
June-13		124 kWh		356 kWh
June-14		122 kWh		349 kWh
June-15		117 kWh		333 kWh
June-16		107 kWh		303 kWh
June-17		127 kWh		365 kWh

Solar panels at summer solstice 15º pitch:

35860906535_cfb8213714_z.jpg


35860906095_cd1368a19b_z.jpg
 
DuncanCunningham said:
I would love to have tracking on mine. Maybe another day? You have a lot of kwh totals from those panels. Really over 100kWh per day?
No! those are monthly totals for the various years! A good day for me here is 13 kWh.

A good way to look at production is total energy produced divided by the rated power of the panels. So, for a sunny day production of 13.3 kWh divided by 2.17 kW I get 6.13 hours of rated production. Of more interest is the annual total divided by days and rated power. For 2016 I got:

3227 kWh/365 days = 8.84 kWh/day average
8.84 kWh/2.17 kW = 4.07 hours, which is pretty good for my latitude, 38ºN, and climate zone (mountain snowbelt; lots of clouds in the mountains).

This is a good way to compare the overall production of a system to installations in other geographic areas.
 
i've only been going for about 3 weeks. I'll have to see how it goes. I have no preconceived notions of how it should look. just going with the flow right now. the limit in our city was 10kW system. I should have taken it to the max but I'm happy so far.
 
I installed 13.2 KW system last year using 44 SolarWorld 300 watt panels. 10 each on my east & west facing garage roofs and 24 on the south facing roof of my home.

Since install in late June 2016, I have produced 12.4 MWh while using 9 MWh. 3.4 MWh sent back to the grid. There were a few weeks in there where I wasn't able to monitor while they installed various meters and equipment.

This has been a very worthwhile, long-term investment a little over a year in.
 
mnsolardriver said:
I installed 13.2 KW system last year using 44 SolarWorld 300 watt panels. 10 each on my east & west facing garage roofs and 24 on the south facing roof of my home.

Since install in late June 2016, I have produced 12.4 MWh while using 9 MWh. 3.4 MWh sent back to the grid. There were a few weeks in there where I wasn't able to monitor while they installed various meters and equipment.

This has been a very worthwhile, long-term investment a little over a year in.

I"m not allowed to add to my solar system now.. if I do it would have to be classed as a NEW system and I would be put onto a tariff metering which is not as nice for me. Right now it's net metering and kwh for kwh the same in as the price is out.

I could do a stand alone system on my garage, like yours. It has a gable end facing south so I could do a east and west setup on it. I'd have to collect the power into batteries and then I could use them to charge my cars. Not sure how to do that, probably have to get a bunch of Tesla power walls for that.

I do have a TED energy monitor that I could hook up to my circuits feeding the car charging and see what daily numbers I get.
 
DuncanCunningham said:
mnsolardriver said:
I"m not allowed to add to my solar system now.. if I do it would have to be classed as a NEW system and I would be put onto a tariff metering which is not as nice for me. Right now it's net metering and kwh for kwh the same in as the price is out.

I could do a stand alone system on my garage, like yours. It has a gable end facing south so I could do a east and west setup on it. I'd have to collect the power into batteries and then I could use them to charge my cars. Not sure how to do that, probably have to get a bunch of Tesla power walls for that.

I do have a TED energy monitor that I could hook up to my circuits feeding the car charging and see what daily numbers I get.


I see Tesla is taking pre-orders for their solar roof, which are nice looking shingles and they roll the cost of the powerwall into the pricing. A 14 kWh powerwall would cover a lot of driving (50 miles / day or so in a LEAF) without you losing the excess power to the utility.

Net metering is really what gives you the payback and I'm fortunate that this is the set-up in Minnesota.
 
October seemed unusually sunny here and so it turned out to be — my solar production was the second highest since I started tracking it in 2008, coming close to my best October in 2012.

Solar production for October:
Code:
	   		700 W		  2170 W
		    Old Panels   Old+New Panels
Oct-08		 96 kWh
Oct-09		 87 kWh
Oct-10		 98 kWh
Oct-11		100 kWh
Oct-12		113 kWh		322 kWh
Oct-13		 98 kWh		276 kWh
Oct-14		100 kWh		279 kWh
Oct-15		 84 kWh		235 kWh
Oct-16		106 kWh		299 kWh
Oct-17		110 kWh		311 kWh

My panels are currently at a 45º pitch; I'll lower them to 55º next week for the next few months around the solstice. A couple of days before the end of the October I cut a piñon pine that had grown up high enough — they do like to do that! — to shade the panels in the late afternoon when the sun is in the current position, about two months before and after the winter solstice. Adds about a half kWh per day on sunny days this time of the year.
 
Since I saw a new momentary production peak yesterday, I thought this would be a good time to update this year's production.

First, the peak: With my recent upgrades, the AC rating of the array now stands at 12.775 kW. Yesterday, just before noon, production peaked at 12.0 kW:

Array_Production_20171207_1150_AM.png


Due to the pointing angle of the M250s on the roof, I don't expect to see the full 12.775 kW at any time this winter, but I do think we might see over 12.5 kW, particularly on a cold, clear day when there is snow on the ground (and none on the arrays).

2017 is turning out to be the lowest production year since the array was expanded to include 54 inverters. Production should come in below 18 MWh. Production will likely fall short of last year's record production by nearly a full MWh.

Below are all our numbers for 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 along with the PVWatts predictions for the old array (PVW42: good through June 2014) and the new array (PVW54: good starting with July 2014):
Code:
Month    PVW42   2011   2012   2013   2014   2015   2016   2017  PVW54  Units
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
January    916    669    869    822    857   1006   1300    756   1229   kWh
February   702    158   1085    866   1054   1361   1192   1241    915   kWh
March      965      0   1350   1152   1113   1547   1498   1572   1240   kWh
April     1465      0   1465   1495   1338   1737   1754   1654   1899   kWh
May       1583      0   1477   1491   1457   2069   1574   1618   2074   kWh 
June      1268      0   1478   1368   1521   1585   1932   1916   1666   kWh
Code:
July      1448    595   1395   1406   1880   1823   1887   1792   1902   kWh
August    1442   1347   1447   1333   1794   1887   1932   1778   1875   kWh
September 1209    910   1295   1414   1577   1495   1551   1612   1555   kWh
October   1304    931    981   1034   1258   1415   1593   1587   1713   kWh
November   864    949   1041   1018   1227   1277   1340   1205   1154   kWh
December   820    803    612    669    812    865   1002          1108   kWh
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Totals   13986   6362  14495  14068  15888  18067  18555  16731  18330   kWh
Our system has produced 104.166 MWh from installation through the end of November 2017.
 
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