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First months energy production from 530W array in UK

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fourtytwo

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The following chart shows energy production in watt/hours accumulated per hour for the last month on my small array used for water heating. The pink line is hot water cylinder temperature in degC, unfortunately I have had to resort to the oil boiler a few mornings (steep rise in temperature) as we are presently having weather more like October than June/July, my garage has been flooded to a depth of six inches and the garden washed away, where is summer lols

I would be interested in other peoples results, my tiny array faces SSW at an angle of 52deg, I am Latitude 52deg,35mins and almost 0 Longitude.
 

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Indeed where is summer?
Yesterday afternoon was superb with nice sunshine here in North East Scotland, today not so good, dull and grey sky completely overcast.

I once had a brief flirtation with solar panels, a guy came around and gave me his spiel, I listened and thought "this is expensive".
Also, his presentation was very short on hard facts and statistics of sunlight hours in this or any other location, so I politefully declined his offers.
Having said all that, I have a south facing roof, large area and steeper than average slope which would be ideal for solar power.

One thing I have noticed is that there are solar panels mounted on east facing roofs. How is that supposed to be in any way efficient, other than in the sale of solar panels?

JimB
 
One thing I have noticed is that there are solar panels mounted on east facing roofs. How is that supposed to be in any way efficient, other than in the sale of solar panels?

Apparently you can now get panels optimised for sunlight from the side, rather than direct - however, I presume they aren't as efficient?.
 
I once had a brief flirtation with solar panels, a guy came around and gave me his spiel, I listened and thought "this is expensive".
Also, his presentation was very short on hard facts and statistics of sunlight hours in this or any other location, so I politefully declined his offers.
Very expensive and unlikely to pay for itself within it's lifetime IMOP that's why I went fully DIY! Nobody will give you hard facts though there are a few websites that will give you an estimate (all different) and are often complex to understand, thats why I published my real results (easy to extrapolate for bigger systems). However you are a long way north, BTW I wish mine were a bit more easterly as they dont really get going till lunchtime and I would love to capture the morning sun that is a bit more reliable hereabouts. Had you considered wind ? if you have an open site and enough land that might be better for you :)
 
Apparently you can now get panels optimised for sunlight from the side, rather than direct - however, I presume they aren't as efficient?.
That sounds like a bit of salesmanship! for a start the column of cells nearest the light source is shaded by the frame beyond a certain angle causing severe losses. Poly cells are supposed to be slightly better than amorphous due to the light scattering but its not a serious effect, mine are poly but they still don't show much interest beyond about +-45deg (estimate) of center.
 
Apparently you can now get panels optimised for sunlight from the side, rather than direct - however, I presume they aren't as efficient?.
Even if they were as efficient, the energy of the sunlight hitting the panel is proportional to the sine of the angle of the sun to the panel.
 
So you're using solar electric power to heat water? o_O

Isn't that about the most costly yet inefficient way there is to use solar energy for water heating purposes? :rolleyes:
 
Isn't that about the most costly yet inefficient way there is to use solar energy for water heating purposes? :rolleyes:
No Sir, because your are not considering the whole life cost!! My entire installation cost less than a third of the equivalent solar water heating system and the installation was a cinch, no boiler plumbing changes, no airing cupboard rebuilds to accommodate a new cylinder and no cutting holes in the roof for pipes!
 
It's actually not that bad of an idea. Somewhere, there is a published paper with my name in it or on it where I was involved in said research. They used me and my skills to design and purchase parts to build stuff to do just that and other stuff. Pre-heating the water turned out to be a good idea. No inverters involved and no complex plumbing. Someone else built my design under my guidance and still someone else designed the experiments and took and analyzed the data. It was a very fast paced project from start to finish in co-operation with our local utility. It might be why we have systems where the utility can turn off the AC unit during periods of high demand.

Anyway, we had an electric water heater and a solar array fully instrumented and we could dump water remotely from the heater to simulate a shower.
 
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