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Nature

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  1. Thanks
    Nature reacted to GreenFields in Panels and orientation   
    A panel will allow different levels of electrical current to flow through it, depending on the level of light falling on it. More sun, more current, less sun, less current. The problem is, if you place all the panels electrically in series, the the entire string will be current-limited by the panels receiving the shadow side, which will be the West-side panels in the morning, and the East-side panels towards the evening. Some folks say it's fine, personally I don't like the idea.
  2. Like
    Nature reacted to Peter V in Daily kWh usage   
    I coulld pull down all of my data but that is a schlep. In broad terms, I've had panels (4,32kWp) and a 10 kW battery for a bit more than a year. We live in East London where PV potential is about as low as it gets in SA. My daily average usage is around 17kWh (a lot higher when the aircons pump in Jan/ Feb/Mar) and our Eskom average is less than 4 kWh/day. That saving translates into about R1200 pm @R2,89/kWh pre-paid.
    We do have solar water heating with a 2 kW element on a timer for one hour. This normally will draw from battery about 40 days a year.
    Today was not great, 33C, aircons going and mainly overcast, PV yeild - 15kWh, Eskom - 6 kWh to get battery back to full charge and keep the inverter running. Battery always keeps me going through the night, normally with a reasonable reserve for load shedding first thing in the morning.
  3. Like
    Nature reacted to GreenFields in kWh generate by panels   
    Suspect you could optimise somewhat through changing the settings or timers. For e.g. from 08:00, with a SOL+UTI charge source, you're quite possibly charging your Hubble predominantly from the grid. Maybe Solar priority could work better, or try delaying the charging to later when the sun is higher.
    In general though, You seem to be over-panelled relative to your loads (good for Winter). Might be an option to add more loads, or just run your existing loads less frugally. Extended pool filter time, or run the longer washing machine cycles instead of the 30-minute quick-wash, at higher temperatures, use the stove instead of the airfryer, slow-cook a roast, warm the geyser for longer/hotter, etc. Since you've got the power, may as well use it.
  4. Like
    Nature reacted to Scorp007 in kWh generate by panels   
    Based on the above your yield from panels is very low. 
  5. Like
    Nature reacted to Antonio de Sa in kWh generate by panels   
    @Nature  Bottom left so far you have generated 42 KWH, you can check this every day.
  6. Like
    Nature reacted to zsde in kWh generate by panels   
    The inverter itself only shows the accumulated total generated. As Antonio has indicated, you would need to check the daily total and use that to calculate the daily generation until you have the dongle or a 3rd party solution.
  7. Like
    Nature reacted to zsde in kWh generate by panels   
    The generation depends on the usage. You would need to compare your kWh generation to what you actually used in the time that you had solar energy on the day. 
    Your peak would be around 11 to 13:00 in your case around 4000Watt should be possible. 
    Lets assume a 50% of your total generation power for a period of 6 hours. Thus around 2000W for 6 hours would be a rough guestimate, i.e. around 12kWh for the day in full sun. Of course early morning and late afternoon will be a lot less. But we want to speculate an expectation here.
    The only way to to check more accurately would be a load that equals the max production for the duration of the day.
  8. Like
    Nature reacted to GreenFields in kWh generate by panels   
    On a good sunny day you could comfortably get 20kWh or more per day, assuming you're actually using the power by running loads during the day, or storing the power in batteries with big enough capacity, and assuming that there's not some other inherent flaw in your installation like panel layout or shading, etc.
    Hard to say more without knowing the full details of your installation, batteries, inverter, configuration and settings, and how much are your loads, and when you run them.
     
     
  9. Like
    Nature reacted to zsde in kWh generate by panels   
    Perhaps some data to make it a bit clearer. And this data is courtesy of Solar Assistant. Guys like Antonio have even better overview with their own developed software.
    My own system really only produces 1 third to one half of it's possible production. But that is based on my fairly moderate usage.
    In the example, a typical day that depicts my loads and the solar peaks. You will see that at some stage earlier in the morning I actually drew more power than the available solar but later in the day the solar always matched and exceeded the demand. In fact you will see peaks of 5kW where the load was not that high but the max was pulled as battery charge was in progress simultaneously. Now imagine if I had been pushing a 4 to 5kW load for the 2 to 3 hours where the solar peak was 5kW+.
    On this day my 6+kW panels provided for the demand and the batteries. You can well imagine the SolarPV if I had the need to use more and this was a "high usage" day as we used the oven for quite some time too
                             Load                   SolarPV               Charge                  Discharge




    If I however then compare that to my typical monthly average in summer, then the daily SolarPV will reflect lesser values as my usage on average is really 10 to 12kWh per day.
    Feb was an average daily SolarPV of 13,7KWh
    Mar so far is an average of 14,4kWh Solar PV


    Thus, to test your solar potential would need some load testing to see what your system could produce. 
  10. Like
    Nature reacted to Antonio de Sa in kWh generate by panels   
    As explained by zsde and Greenfields it depends on the usage, (You would need to compare your kWh generation to what you actually used) looking at the picture you posted, at that specific time your load is only 313 VA so looks like your load is very low.
  11. Like
    Nature reacted to Antonio de Sa in kWh generate by panels   
    As you can see from the dashboard my system 12 X 415 solar panels generate a daily average of 15 KWH per day, could be much more as basically from about 12 o'clock my battery will be fully charged my geyser done and from there until the wife starts to use the oven for cooking at about 4 o'clock the system is basically idling. 
    I would like to stress that I run my system on SUB, battery is only there for load shedding however, sometimes I do make use of it's power during the night.

  12. Like
    Nature got a reaction from zsde in Daily kWh usage   
    We will pay R1500 a month into an account. This will be for future use on replacement and addition of equipment. I am actually excited about this whole process of getting rid of Eskom
  13. Like
    Nature got a reaction from WannabeSolarSparky in Daily kWh usage   
    We will pay R1500 a month into an account. This will be for future use on replacement and addition of equipment. I am actually excited about this whole process of getting rid of Eskom
  14. Like
    Nature got a reaction from WannabeSolarSparky in Daily kWh usage   
    R25 a month sounds very good 🙂. I do not want to spend money on electricity anymore. Eskom pushed us in to a corner and in future I don't want to depend on them. 
  15. Like
    Nature got a reaction from zsde in Daily kWh usage   
    R25 a month sounds very good 🙂. I do not want to spend money on electricity anymore. Eskom pushed us in to a corner and in future I don't want to depend on them. 
  16. Like
    Nature got a reaction from zsde in Daily kWh usage   
    Thank you for the feedback. We are also on gas for cooking and coffee. An extra battery is not an option at this stage. I would rather consider adding 2 panels to reduce the battery charging time. This system must save us a lot of money taking into account future electricity increases. 
  17. Like
    Nature got a reaction from WannabeSolarSparky in Daily kWh usage   
    Thank you for the feedback. We are also on gas for cooking and coffee. An extra battery is not an option at this stage. I would rather consider adding 2 panels to reduce the battery charging time. This system must save us a lot of money taking into account future electricity increases. 
  18. Like
    Nature got a reaction from zsde in Daily kWh usage   
    Thank you very much. The geyser is on from 13:00 to 14:30. My plan is to spend a max of R200 on electricity under sunny conditions. 
  19. Like
    Nature got a reaction from WannabeSolarSparky in Daily kWh usage   
    Thank you very much. The geyser is on from 13:00 to 14:30. My plan is to spend a max of R200 on electricity under sunny conditions. 

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