Solar Generation

Interestingly, I've just checked back on the app to see what time solar started generating a minimum of 100w from my roof in Essex. I have 6 panels on my east roof and 7 panels on my south roof. I live in a bungalow so my roof is lower than 2 story houses and I do get shading first thing from other properties 150 feet away on the eastern aspect.
However, on 21st June, 100w was reached at 5.25am. Today, 3 months on, almost on the autumn solstice, the solar reached 100w at 7.20am, a difference of nearly 2 hours!
Further checking also showed that 20th December last year, 100w was achieved at 9.20am. I hasten to add that all the days chosen started sunny.

I thought this might be of interest for those who have had solar fitted in the last few months to demonstrate how short the solar generation period is in winter.

Yes, our solar panels generate 3000 kwh over the year but this varies from 20 in midsummer to just 1 or 2 units in the winter - a huge difference!

SteveUK That is comparable to my situation here in Scottish Borders: 23kwh max from 3.95 kw of panels max expecting 3 kWh minimum in December. We have. 9.5kwh GE battery plus a 10kwh Sunamp heat battery so now ( late Sept) moving into offpeak time shifting mode, after averaging 11kwh since the mid March install. Our annual daytime grid consumption will average below 1kwh a day.

billG now we’ll into November and some pretty dismal days. My 4kw PV array is south facing but is now suffering a bit as the garage roof is now being shaded by a hedge as the sun is so low, so averaging just 2kwh per day with some days barely registering if very wet. Roll on March!

This last 12 months has been rubbish for solar (2023)

2022 was a lot better, when looking at 2023, nearly every month had huge gains

2021 was my best year for solar it was my first full year of install, this was the best by far, month after month (OCT) was crazy good,

2020 only had solar a few month AUG, so cant really say much, but was still good when looking at 2023

lifco Interesting.

I don't take monthly readings but looking at my annual FIT generation figures from my west-facing array

2016 2904kW
2017 2815kW
2018 3211kW
2019 3029kW
2020 3216kW
2021 2945kW
2022 3152kW (excluding Dec 2022)
2023 2483kW (from Dec 2022 to Nov 2023)

Eon changed my FIT reading dates in 2022 so I'm now no longer taking a January reading and my 'year' is now skewed by a month.

There's not a lot of variation year to year. If 2022 had been a full year of readings it could well have been my best year

2023 has been pretty crap weather wise, everything we've got is down on last year when it was installed for us.

Only thing we can do is cheaper inport and use the battery for powering the house (mostly).

I'd love to be able to suppliment the power generation with a secondary source, but... its just not practical.

I think 2022 was a very good year for solar generation, maybe '23 is closer to the norm? It does seem to have been very overcast, very often, this year though.

I have an older SolarEdge system as well as my newer GivEnergy system.

Interesting to read that 2023 hasn't been a good year for solar as we only got ours installed in May this year, so have no comparison figures for other years. We have so far exceeded the PVGIS estimate by 8-10% most months though and three weeks into November we've generated on average enough to just about cover each day's use of about 7kWh a day.

If PVGIS continues to be slightly under our actual, then only December and January will be less generation than we typically use at that time of year at about 60% of our use. We're probably oversized for our summer use, but Flux export will be plentiful and we're covering our winter use despite only getting export at the end of August.

5.5kW array, 9.5kWh battery, PVGIS estimate 5500kWh a year, use is approx 2500kWh a year.

Roll on March (2024) as that is the start of solar when it begins, Hopefully this will be a great year for us all