As we kick off April, it is time to see how we did generating solar power in March.
You will recall that in February we generated 79.7 percent of what was anticipated. In December and January combined, we generated just 70.5 percent of anticipated electricity. In both cases, the fact that the sun didn’t want to come out all winter was the culprit for not meeting expectations.
That should mean that in March, which saw record high temperatures and plenty of sun, should be much better. Well, yes, except for that little Deger malfunction. I am still waiting for the replacement part, and it can’t come fast enough. One of my solar arrays has been table-topped for the past week.
At the end of January, I reported that the meter read 2722 kilowatt hours generated. This morning, I read the meter at 4218 kilowatt hours. Which means that we generated 1496 kilowatt hours of electricity in March, or just 71.5 percent of the 2092 kilowatt hours we should have generated (according to the official PVwatts calculations.
Having the panels functioning at less than full capacity in March is quite a hit, because March is supposed to be the fourth highest generating month, after July, June and May. Hopefully I will be able soon to report that we are back up and functioning at 100 percent and generating the expected number of kilowatt hours.
Thanks for all the interesting posts, your system looks awesome. We have a small microFIT system on the roof of our house in Toronto. Based on our experience this year, I’m surprised that you feel you under produced so far. We’ve been above average in Toronto for sun this year, and the nearly complete lack of snow in Toronto helped too.
You can see graphs for our entire production history here: http://www.yourturn.ca/solar/our-system/graphs-and-logs/annual-graph/?year=2012 Click a bar to drill down to a month, and then to a day.
So I’m curious where you’re getting the numbers for what you “should” be producing? The government of Canada produces some excellent benchmark figures for solar insolation (amount of sunshine) across the country. We have a link to that, and some explanation of how to do some math to figure out your likely production, on a different page of our site: http://www.yourturn.ca/solar/microfit/how-much-money-do-you-make/
I’d be curious to know if the results of that calculation, when done for your system/location, are close to the expectations you have so far? Maybe you have shading that is a factor? We’re fortunate to have basically no shade, and a 160 degree south orientation.
I like all the pictures and info in your site a lot, I’ve added a link on our Links page to you guys.
Good luck with your system!
–Julian
Hi Julian.
The calculations are based on PVwatts, and I have included a link in the post above to that page.