Good afternoon, all today i thought i'd have a look at this, which is a web portal into the solar output. That's coming from my solace inverter. So i've got solar panels on the roof of my house. 3.8 kilowatts and i've got an inverter which is 3.6 kilowatts.

Now it's not putting out 3.6 kilowatts right now. Now you can see their installed. Capacity is 3.6 kilowatts peak, but it's only putting out 250 watts because it's a fairly cloudy day now. This is the curve for today it's about 2 p.m, and we haven't done terribly well.

The peak there was uh 1.54 kilowatts as well under what you'd get on a perfectly sunny day. So what do you get on a perfectly sunny day? Well, of course, it depends whether it's a perfectly sunny summer, day or winter day. Now. This is really the only perfect sunny day curve that i've got in about nine months of ownership of this solar power system, and you can see that there's barely a notch in it, so there wasn't a cloud in the sky.

What's interesting, though, is that the peak power is well below 3.6 kilowatts, in fact it's under 3.2 kilowatts, and the reason for that is that when solar panels get warm - and this was presumably a warm day - it was the 17th of july 2021. There, the voltage on each cell drops and therefore at a fixed, current uh. The overall power drops. This thing keeps refreshing for whatever reason so yeah you don't get the full 3.6 kilowatts, which is rather disappointing because there's 3.8 kilowatts of solar panels, a 3.6 kilowatt inverter, and on this warm sunny day, i only managed to get just under 3.2 kilowatts peak of solar, But there was a good yield.

This day it was 25 kilowatt hours. So what does a perfectly sunny winter's day? Look like this day was a perfect, no cloud sun. Strangely, it was exactly six months later on the 17th of january this year, 2022, and you can see that the peak power is well down on the summer perfect sunny day, because, of course, the sun is much lower in the sky. So peak power was 2.47 kilowatts across winter.

You don't get the 3.6 kilowatts you're never going to get that because the sun's too low um it's a much less wide curve. It started here at about 9 a.m and just after 4 p.m. 10. Past.

Four. It crashed down to absolutely nothing, but what's this curious bite mark here, that seems to have eaten a big chunk of uh total yield kilowatt hours? What's eaten that away? Well, let's take a look at a short video. I made the other day: it's 10 45 a.m, and you can just see the shadow of the tv aerial on the bottom left of the solar panels. There's the neighbors chimney and his aerial is casting a shadow, and now it's um about 12 45 just coming out to one o'clock.

I suppose, and you can see, that the shadow of the neighbour's chimney is just and more specifically the tv aerial is just going to clear the panels now and so that explains the bite mark in the perfect solar curve. So, starting at about 10 30 a.m and going on till about 13, 30, 1, 30 p.m that tv aerial cuts away. I don't know a kilowatt hour, maybe a bit more of total energy out of my solar yield because of my neighbor's tv aerial. Now so far, both in the winter curve, which, like i say, starts at about 9 00 a.m, ends just after 4 p.m and in the summer curve, which gets going probably about 8 00 a.m and actually doesn't hit the deck until oh 8.

30Pm uh, 8. 30. In the evening, on the eyes of those, neither of those curves do we see the 3.6 kilowatts that the inverter can theoretically produce uh from the 3.8 kilowatts of solar panels on the roof. However, you can see that 3.6 kilowatts and there it is on this curve.

Now this is a little bit earlier in the year this was may the 6th, and you can see what should have been a perfect sunny day which may have yielded if it weren't for the limit on the inverter, the 3.8 kilowatts theoretical peak of the solar panels And there's the inverter actually creating a flat top to this curve, because it can only put out 3.6 kilowatts, it's actually limited to that amount of output. I think you get 3.61 occasionally, but there's the inverter limit creating a flat top on this curve. So, while on this particular day, was the inverter able to hit this 3.6 kilowatts peak and hold it well, probably because this was a cooler day, this was may the 6th 2021 and the solar panels were probably just a lot cooler. Also, the other thing that tends to happen here is that when you get these gaps, which is where cloud passes over the solar panels, they cool down.

So then, when the sun comes out, you do get the full 3.6 kilowatt yield, theoretically slightly more than that. If the inverter allowed for it, which is the peak output power of these solar panels, now here's a curve from september the 27th, which is not far from the equinox - and you can see here that the system is still capable of producing 3.6 kilowatts and the top Has been flattened off so that is the limitation created by the inverter, but this is a much narrower curve than the summer curve. It's just able to maintain that 3.6 kilowatts peak, but it's probably one of the last days in the year where it gets to that peak. This.

This peak, of course, is helped by the fact that there were large periods where there were clouds. So the panels had a chance to cool down, so here we have us just a little bit of sustained peak at that 3.6 kilowatts, but later in the year of course, that can't happen because the sun's too low in the sky. So here, for example, this is about a month later, it's the 20th of october. There is a peak here at well, it's not 3.6 kilowatts, it's 3.44, and that appears to be the top.

That's 3.42. So by this point in the year, the system simply cannot generate 3.6 kilowatts and bear in mind that i'm cherry picking these curves. Of course i mean, if i go to the next day. Oh well there's a much sunnier day, but that's only 3.2 kilowatts and then the next day.

Oh now, what's that? Oh there's 3.63 kilowatts! So yes on the 22nd of uh october, it did actually manage to yield very briefly uh 3.6 kilowatts. But then you get days which are terrible, like this, a peak of 880 watts back to a relatively sunny day, but under three kilowatts, and so it goes on. Oh we've got some peaks there at 3.5 kilowatts. So this time in the year it's just capable of producing the maximum power, but it has to be a very specific day.

So, what's the best output in november? Well, not surprisingly, perhaps it was the first day of november november, the 1st the peak there is 3.1 kilowatts and, as we go through november, peaked under three kilowatts uh two and a half uh, that's barely over 600 watts and the cloudy days, of course, aren't anything Like as good as the sunny days, two and a half kilowatts barely over 1.5 on the 8th, so what was the best day in december? Well, it's actually this one! It's the 28th of december! The peak is 2.24 kilowatts well below the uh 3.6. Kilowatts that the solace inverter can produce and uh the peak in january was this day the fifth of january, reasonably sunny day. You can see the bite there, the bite mark, where the neighbor's tv aerial, of course cuts the peak down or cuts the curve down. The peak here was 2.52 kilowatts in january now, what's the worst day of solar power, i've seen well, this one was pretty bad.

It's not actually the worst i'll come to that, but you can see here that the peak was just 60 watts. But what's all this switching on and off thing here between 0 watts and 20 watts? Well, the inverter can only produce a minimum of 20 watts anything less than that and it just shuts down. So what it tends to do is the the input capacitors fill up. It thinks oh there's some solar power i'll start generating the minimum i can, which is 20 watts, those capacitors.

Then discharge and the inverter says no. I can't keep that up, i'm dropping to 20 watts and you can actually hear on the inverter a relay clicking in and out and very often in the morning it clicks in and out several times, then there's enough light to sustain the minimum 20 watts. On this day, the 24th of november, it briefly got up to 60 watts, but then fell back again to this shoulder of 20 watts, the relay clicks in and out, and it eventually drops down to zero, of course, when it gets dark, but the absolute worst day. I've seen was quite recently, actually it was the 25th of january 2022 and we got the relay clicking in and out at the beginning of the day, just managing 20 watts periodically.

Then it held 20 watts and then, in the middle of the day now my house doesn't face um completely due south. The roof is slightly west of south. So it's always after midday when you get the peak but there's the peak. Yes, 30 watts, 30 watts for a few minutes, drop back down to 20 watts and then the relay clicks in and out and that's the end of the solar day and the very next day, the 26th of january.

It was a little bit brighter, quite a lot brighter actually and the system peaked at 2.6. Kilowatts, which uh is a dam site better than 30 watts, now just moving forward, um, 27th, 28th jan 29th, and we get into february. This was uh. Oh that's! The 31st of january peaked at 2.77 kilowatts.

So, as we uh head into february, the peak power available is creeping up noticeably um. This is the first of feb, which is actually yesterday, 2.94 kilowatts, so we're just at the point where the system is capable of breaking back through that three kilowatts, and this is today, of course, and it's uh now dropping off, because it's uh getting later in the Afternoon and the lights fading, this photo here isn't actually my roof. It's just a generic photo of some solar panels, but this appears to be the date that the system was in store. The 16th of april 2021 um, if you're interested in what this curve is down.

The bottom here um - this is interesting - solace - have recently added this to the portal and what it is. It's, the agile, important output graphs, showing the price of energy every half an hour and at the moment, because energy prices are so expensive. The price that you can buy energy um - this is from octopus energy. Excessive data from octopus.energy is capped at this 35p per kilowatt hour, but this blue curve is interesting for me because i've recently signed up for the octopus outgoing agile tariff, which means that no longer am i being paid three pence per kilowatt hour for energy that i Send out to the grid um i'm actually being paid whatever this graph is sitting at so certain times in the day, and this is typically the early evening - that's showing what is it 30.9, so 31p peak at i mean i can't actually generate electricity with the solar Panels at 6 pm in the evening because it's dark, so i won't get that 30p, but i might if prices the outgoing prices stay this high as we move into the spring and pass through, of course, the spring equinox where it starts to get lighter each day And much more quickly, so i'm certainly looking forward to seeing how much um i can get per kilowatt hour of export based on this set of agile prices.

So there we are. That was a little look at the solar output from my rooftop solar panels and solace. Inverter on a lovely, warm summer's day, hard to remember quite how that feels at the moment and a correspondingly perfectly sunny cold winter's day, complete with neighbors tv aerial, interrupting my solar production and how bad solar can get on the darkest of dingy uh winter duff. I think this was a bit uh foggy.

Actually it was certainly very heavily overcast gray. The air was extremely damp. It was just one of those really horrible days, and so here's looking forward to more of this sort of thing. This is actually the second day that i got the wi-fi dongle working on the solace inverter a few days after the system was installed uh.

So it's a pretty good day. It's actually back in april the 19th. The very first day was april, the 18th, and this is where i got the dongle uh up and running, and you can see that they actually have the 3.6 kilowatts flat top. So those are some solar, curves, cheerio.