Good Day for Solar PV Generation

It’s only reasonable to expect the generation from solar panels to be less impressive in winter than in summer but today was a good illustration that some days in winter can still deliver good results. The almost complete absence of cloud today meant some level of generation right from sunrise (07:44) to sunset (16:00) and peak generation of 3.143 kW around noon (from a nominal 5.4 kWp installation). The daily total of 17.52 kWh is half that of the best days in May (the best month so far) but much better than the worst days in May. The graph from the SolarEdge dashboard is a very pleasing shape, without the usual ups and downs as clouds pass over.

Near perfect solar generation profile

The generation was more than sufficient to re-heat the hot water via the immerSUN automatic solar PV diverter (as still happens most days) and managed to supply the 2 kW required for the ground source heat pump when it ran for 20 minutes to heat the house around noon. At other times it was exporting to the grid, managing 6.8 kW of export in total.

Overall: not a bad result for a month before the shortest day of the year.