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zaphod

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Joined: 03/06/2018
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 93

Posted: 05:03pm 02 Mar 2019

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An update covering the last three years up till the end of last month from my tiny 1Kw array here in the dull UK! 52deg North. This is predominantly a water heating system but during 2018 a GTI was added (export inhibited) to use some of the surplus in the house, this improved the utilization in summer 2018 compared with 2017. There are several outages due to experimentation and uhum magic smoke emissions :)

Cheers Roger
1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :)

yahoo2

Guru

Joined: 05/04/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 1166

Posted: 04:50am 03 Mar 2019

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Hi Roger,
the ol latitude shortens the winter days but the local weather is 90% of production loss.

I have done a ton of installs in a small area that has beachfront, urban areas, hills and flat open country. its not uncommon to have 2 houses within 1.5 miles with 20% difference in output. one particular spot on a slope had a 60% reduction of output compared to the flat land.

there could be only one cloud in the sky and it would always be in the same spot--- shading those panels.

I chatted with a guy this morning, he has a 2.8 kw system his stats for the last 3 months is 24.6 kwh /day.
used 17kwh pumped 7.6 back into the grid

he wants to add 2.8 kw more solar panels (has the room for panels and inverter capacity) that will give him about 15 kwh per day in the middle of winter. It is going to be interesting to cost it out and see how viable it is.

if the house can be made reasonably airtight we might be able to reverse cycle heat for a few hours from the solar.

I'm confused, no wait... maybe I'm not...

zaphod

Regular Member

Joined: 03/06/2018
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 93

Posted: 08:46am 03 Mar 2019

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Here I got a fat phone cable (1" OD) flying over my land about 15ft away from the panels and similar height so when the sun is low on the horizon in winter it shadows one cell in every column of the entire array, but that's not so bad as a tree or another house so I count my blessings! I am also lucky in that it is facing SW, not as good as S but better than W :)

If I was a bit more agile I could refit the array further up the roof (it's on the gutterline atm) but given the roof is 50 degrees I would rather suffer a little winter loss than fall off it!!

Of course living in Australia is a completely different ballgame but then our snakes and spiders are nearly all harmless and the stream at the bottom of my garden doesn't have crocs in it!!

Cheers Roger
1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :)

MasterCATZ
Regular Member

Joined: 25/03/2011
Location: Australia
Posts: 52

Posted: 01:03am 08 May 2019

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guess when our 5kw system seen some of its own magic smoke

yes was down for almost 1 yr waiting on an approved installer to repair it ..
was a simple repair as well just needed a daughter board changed

Edited by MasterCATZ 2019-05-09

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