January 2011 Output

Well, January is officially over and that was the first full month of power generation.





The final output was 183.3 kWh. The projection from the analysis was 240kWh. That means I hit about 75% of target, which was pretty decent because it seemed like we had a lot of snow and lots of cloudy days this month!

I think the important thing to see is that there was about 6 days that were for the most part nothing days and that the overall trend is increasing. The average yield per day is approximately 6kWh/day and if you took the first half of the month and the second half of the month as a unit, you would see the second half was significantly better.

Why is this? Well there is a couple reason.

1. Days are getting longer! The system turns on earlier in the morning and stays on later in the afternoon.
2. I am more aware of what needs to be removed and what doesn't in terms of snow.
3. As the days get longer, the sun gets higher, and with a low slope (15 degrees), my panels should be getting more efficient.

My highlight for the month is reaching 4.3kWh for a couple seconds. This is AC which is pretty close to 100% effiiency for my system, after you derate the DC to AC conversion of a 5.3kW system!

Here is hoping to February being a strong month with a similar trend!