Like January, February 2014 was also much colder than any previous months this system has ever seen.
Also like January, this record cold weather saw three new record production days for this month of the year:
February 24: 62.763 kWh
February 27: 62.945 kWh
February 28: 62.632 kWh
The previous February production record had been 61.885 kWh on February 21, 2013.
Unfortunately, in addition to the extreme cold, we have also had frequent snowfall this winter, which hurts monthly production. After two months in 2014 we are now 43 kWh behind the pace of our record year of 2012. (I could try to blame being behind February 2012 on the fact that it was a leap year, but the system produced less than 6 kWh on February 29, 2012!)
Here are all our numbers for 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014:
Code:
Month 2011 2012 2013 2014 Units
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January 669 869 822 857 kWh
February 158 1085 866 1054 kWh
March 0 1350 1152 kWh
April 0 1465 1495 kWh
May 0 1477 1491 kWh
June 0 1478 1368 kWh
July 595 1395 1406 kWh
August 1347 1447 1333 kWh
September 910 1295 1414 kWh
October 931 981 1034 kWh
November 949 1041 1018 kWh
December 803 612 669 kWh
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Totals 6362 14495 14068 1911 kWh
Since installation, our system has produced 36.836 MWh as of the end of February 2014.
In looking at production histories for the PV array, I have noticed that the microinverters on the roof are a decent way to find the lowest temperature of the day since that tends to occur at about the time as when the array awakens in the morning. At least this tends to be true in the wintertime. However, some records may be missed if none of the inverters wakes up due to snow cover. Our system has never recorded a temperature below 0F before this year, but so far in 2014 it has logged seven days with temperatures below that level:
January 7, 2014 at 7:26 AM: -4F
January 22, 2014 at 8:14 AM: -2F
January 24, 2014 at 7:20 AM: -2F
January 30, 2014 at 7:30 AM: -4F
February 12, 2014 at 7:12 AM: -2F
February 28, 2014 at 6:45 AM: -2F
March 4, 2014 at at 6:49 AM: -2F
Honorable Mentions (five days below 5F):
January 4, 2014 at 7:58 AM: 1F
January 8, 2014 at 7:23 AM: 3F
January 28, 2014 at 7:29 AM: 1F
January 29, 2014 at 7:30 AM: 1F
February 11, 2014 at 7:06 AM: 3F
While I'm sure dgpcolorado's system sees lower temperatures than this EVERY winter, I'm interested in seeing what minimum temperatures everyone has been getting this year.