# My solar production I have some questions



## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 1, 2018)

I got my system installed. I look at my inverters and its telling me my production. For example in the early AM i my produce 800 watt when the system is first waking up, later in the morning i will produce 3 to 4000 watts the sun comes up more and i produce 7 to 8000 watts. I have arbitrarily checked it and its producing 11,000 watts. My question being  how do i figure out from this information how many kilowatt hours am I producing. Just say my goal is aprox 20,0000 kilowatt hours for the year. Am i going to produce this much with these numbers
Thanks for your help


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## peakbagger (Oct 1, 2018)

Might help using the something like miles instead of watts. The KW reading is your speedometer, its how fast your are going at any given time. kWh is your trip odometer. In the AM the trip odometer is reset to zero and starts counting how many watts/hours you produced. At the end of the day whatever is on your watt hour meter is what you produced.Most inverters have a read out of how many kWh you produced the day before. 

Yearly production is going to vary year by year just like the weather does. Some years you will produce more, some less. Various data bases used to calculate solar have long term averaged idea production data collected over a period time. The programs pick the nearest site or sites and assumes your installation will receive similar quantities of sun, clouds and rain over the course of the year. From there they can estimate your production assuming a conversion efficiency between the panels and the utility meter. Most grid ties folks claim the assumed efficiency factor is low.

If you put your system info in PV Watts you can see what it estimates for monthly production but a stretch of odd weather could skew your current results. Note PV Watts doesn't factor in shading so if you have shading you need a different program that factors it in. It may take a year or so to really see how well the system matches up with projected output. Note that new panels have a slightly higher efficiency initially that rapidly drops off, depending on the solar panel company they may just factor that into the efficiency curve so you get just a slight short term amount of overproduction for the first few days/weeks.

What do you have for monitoring?. If you have a nice bell curve on a sunny day and the instantaneous output is about 75 to 80% of the panel rating your system is probably running correctly. If you see big flat spots on the curve and the sun was out then you have problem. By the way if you remember your high school math, if you plot the kW curve out, the total number of kWh produced for the day is the area under the graph.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 1, 2018)

peakbagger said:


> Might help using the something like miles instead of watts. The KW reading is your speedometer, its how fast your are going at any given time. kWh is your trip odometer. In the AM the trip odometer is reset to zero and starts counting how many watts/hours you produced. At the end of the day whatever is on your watt hour meter is what you produced.Most inverters have a read out of how many kWh you produced the day before.
> 
> Yearly production is going to vary year by year just like the weather does. Some years you will produce more, some less. Various data bases used to calculate solar have long term averaged idea production data collected over a period time. The programs pick the nearest site or sites and assumes your installation will receive similar quantities of sun, clouds and rain over the course of the year. From there they can estimate your production assuming a conversion efficiency between the panels and the utility meter. Most grid ties folks claim the assumed efficiency factor is low.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the reply and thanks for taking the time. I called my solar guy. They have it monitored and hooked me up with the link and log in so now i can see the production.. its pretry cool..


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## Dobish (Oct 9, 2018)

Woodsplitter67 said:


> Thanks for the reply and thanks for taking the time. I called my solar guy. They have it monitored and hooked me up with the link and log in so now i can see the production.. its pretry cool..


pics, or it didn't happen 




as you can see, its been cloudy the last few days


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 9, 2018)

Dobish said:


> pics, or it didn't happen
> 
> View attachment 230530
> 
> as you can see, its been cloudy the last few days



Its been terrible I think yesterday I produced 13 kilowatt hours


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## Dobish (Oct 9, 2018)

Woodsplitter67 said:


> Its been terrible I think yesterday I produced 13 kilowatt hours


i was less than 1 yesterday, so you're doing better than me


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 9, 2018)

Dobish said:


> i was less than 1 yesterday, so you're doing better than me


 
This sucks.. way to many clouds.. the sun came out a little and i went out and looked at the production. I was at 8200 watt


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## peakbagger (Oct 9, 2018)

Fall tends to be pretty cruel for solar production.


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## kborndale (Oct 11, 2018)

I have had my panels for 4 years now, this September was so rainy and cloudy that I only produced about half of what I did the last 3 septembers.  October so far has been not been trending much better so far.  I have to believe that I am getting the same effect on the seasoning of my wood.  Good solar months = good wood drying months and vice versa.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 15, 2018)

Im looking at the production.. this cloudy.. raining.. BS needs to end.. im doing well whrn the suns out, but my god dose this suck with no sun..


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## begreen (Oct 15, 2018)

With low sun angle and tree shading we get little solar production from now until March. The second array will pickup some on sunny days, but the difference is dramatic from peak summer production.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 16, 2018)

begreen said:


> With low sun angle and tree shading we get little solar production from now until March. The second array will pickup some on sunny days, but the difference is dramatic from peak summer production.



So the sun was out for a while today.. there was definitely cloudy times but so far my production was 50kwh and thats not the final total.. so i think that this is good and im happy i think...


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## begreen (Oct 16, 2018)

Woodsplitter67 said:


> So the sun was out for a while today.. there was definitely cloudy times but so far my production was 50kwh and thats not the final total.. so i think that this is good and im happy i think...


That's decent and the benefit of a more southerly latitude.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 17, 2018)

begreen said:


> That's decent and the benefit of a more southerly latitude.



Im not trying to come off like an A-hole. Your in Washington state and im in new jersey. The difference between us is just slightly over 7 degrees. Dose 7 degrees really make that much of a difference and how is that such a big difference. To me 7 degrees isnt that much of a difference. What am i missing.. again im not starting a fight..


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## Dobish (Oct 17, 2018)

Woodsplitter67 said:


> Im not trying to come off like an A-hole. Your in Washington state and im in new jersey. The difference between us is just slightly over 7 degrees. Dose 7 degrees really make that much of a difference and how is that such a big difference. To me 7 degrees isnt that much of a difference. What am i missing.. again im not starting a fight..


7 degrees makes a huge difference, especially when you are talking about the orbit of the earth 

roughly 200 hours of useable sunlight per year difference... (i just picked random addresses with similar solar exposure and size)


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## begreen (Oct 17, 2018)

Woodsplitter67 said:


> Im not trying to come off like an A-hole. Your in Washington state and im in new jersey. The difference between us is just slightly over 7 degrees. Dose 7 degrees really make that much of a difference and how is that such a big difference.



The difference is pretty large. In the Seattle area we are a bit above the latitude of St. John's Newfoundland, which is further north than Quebec City. The sun's angle much lower in winter and this  creates issues of shading from trees and hills when shadows become more exaggerated. That's what gets us on our property. If we were on clear south sloping property with no trees than this would not be an issue, but out here we have big trees. There are doug firs that are 150+ ft tall, casting long shadows. And these are the young trees, not old growth.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 17, 2018)

Dobish said:


> 7 degrees makes a huge difference, especially when you are talking about the orbit of the earth
> 
> roughly 200 hours of useable sunlight per year difference... (i just picked random addresses with similar solar exposure and size)
> View attachment 231118



Really to be honest i didnt think it made that much of a difference.. thanks for posting this.. 200 hours of production is alot. That is roughly 12 hours of sun for 16 days .. so basically I'm  getting a half months more worh of solar generation then bgreen..
Thanks for the info guys and helping me understand.. i haven't checked the final total yet but im thinking I did another 50kwh day today


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## begreen (Oct 18, 2018)

You're probably getting a lot more than 200 hrs. Our winter production is poor. Even now our #1 array is shaded and producing poorly until about noon. Wasn't this way when installed but trees keep getting bigger.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 18, 2018)

begreen said:


> You're probably getting a lot more than 200 hrs. Our winter production is poor. Even now our #1 array is shaded and producing poorly until about noon. Wasn't this way when installed but trees keep getting bigger.



I also have near by trees and i can see the dilemma of shading as part of my array gets a varrity of shade theough the day


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## jebatty (Oct 19, 2018)

I never appreciated a sunny day as much as I do now with the PV system. Cloudy after cloudy day hurts, especially with a new system and hoping it will push out the kWh every day. It's all about the averages: bunches of cloudy days in October-December vs a bunch of sunny days in Jan-Sept. The sunny days win.


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## Brian26 (Oct 19, 2018)

You guys need to get your panels on PVOutput. I have a consumption meter hooked up to mine so I can see track usage and production very accurately. I also have my inverters internal temperature displayed and my Wunderground weather station data added as well. Its also a great tool to track nearby arrays and compare production.

Another big plus is PVoutput reports data much more accurately in minute intervals. The graphs and data you can look at when hooked up with a consumption meter is nuts. They have daily, monthly and yearly charts and graphs. You can also add your electricity cost and it will roughly calculate your savings.

Here is my site.

https://www.pvoutput.org/intraday.jsp?id=60553&sid=53905


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 19, 2018)

Brian26 said:


> You guys need to get your panels on PVOutput. I have a consumption meter hooked up to mine so I can see track usage and production very accurately. I also have my inverters internal temperature displayed and my Wunderground weather station data added as well. Its also a great tool to track nearby arrays and compare production.
> 
> Another big plus is PVoutput reports data much more accurately in minute intervals. The graphs and data you can look at when hooked up with a consumption meter is nuts. They have daily, monthly and yearly charts and graphs. You can also add your electricity cost and it will roughly calculate your savings.
> 
> ...



Thanks for posting this. Im gping to loom at this over the winter.. whats the cost for it


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## Brian26 (Oct 19, 2018)

Its free but a 15$ donation will unlock more features like adding extended data like inverter temp etc.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 19, 2018)

Thanks brian


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## Dobish (Oct 19, 2018)

you added your own usage monitor?  any more info on that?


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## begreen (Oct 19, 2018)

Brian26 said:


> You guys need to get your panels on PVOutput. I have a consumption meter hooked up to mine so I can see track usage and production very accurately. I also have my inverters internal temperature displayed and my Wunderground weather station data added as well. Its also a great tool to track nearby arrays and compare production.
> 
> Another big plus is PVoutput reports data much more accurately in minute intervals. The graphs and data you can look at when hooked up with a consumption meter is nuts. They have daily, monthly and yearly charts and graphs. You can also add your electricity cost and it will roughly calculate your savings.
> 
> ...


Cool. Looks worth checking on. I wonder if I can import data from our monitoring from eGauge?


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## peakbagger (Oct 20, 2018)

If someone likes gadgetry and its free go for it. I am not a fan of sharing data to the public unless someone is writing a check to me and suspect that if the ap is free someone is getting the info.  As I have stated before, to the vast majority of folks PV becomes an appliance. It just runs. The only checks I do is my monthly power bill to make sure I generated power and when I walk by the inverters in my basement I looks to see if the LEDs are flit up. The only other PV duties are move my adjustable arrays 4 times a year.

If I had optimizers or especially microinverters I might have an incentive to do a bit more monitoring as individual panels can fail degrading the system performance. With a string inverter its pretty rare for the string to fail and when it does the voltage drops enough that the string drops out entirely.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 21, 2018)

peakbagger said:


> If someone likes gadgetry and its free go for it. I am not a fan of sharing data to the public unless someone is writing a check to me and suspect that if the ap is free someone is getting the info.  As I have stated before, to the vast majority of folks PV becomes an appliance. It just runs. The only checks I do is my monthly power bill to make sure I generated power and when I walk by the inverters in my basement I looks to see if the LEDs are flit up. The only other PV duties are move my adjustable arrays 4 times a year.
> 
> If I had optimizers or especially microinverters I might have an incentive to do a bit more monitoring as individual panels can fail degrading the system performance. With a string inverter its pretty rare for the string to fail and when it does the voltage drops enough that the string drops out entirely.



So I have optimizers and micro inverters on my system so what would be the advantages to those


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## peakbagger (Oct 21, 2018)

Optimizers and microinverters are attached to individual panels. They both tend to have higher failure rates than string inverters so there is a higher likelihood that or more panels can be out of production yet the array is still putting out power albeit at lower rate. Its pretty obvious when a string it out.


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## begreen (Oct 21, 2018)

Yes, I chose not to use the microinverters, though they might improve my production in shoulder season when shading is more of an issue.  It seems to me that anytime cheap capacitors are placed in a location of heat they are going to have a short lifetime.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 21, 2018)

I have 10 yrs on the micro.. should i be worried


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## peakbagger (Oct 21, 2018)

Woodsplitter67 said:


> I have 10 yrs on the micro.. should i be worried



It depends on the manufacturer. Enphase apparently has some earlier models that were failure prone.


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## begreen (Oct 28, 2018)

Enphase was what I was thinking of. They were all that was available at the time our system went in.


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## peakbagger (Oct 28, 2018)

begreen said:


> Enphase was what I was thinking of. They were all that was available at the time our system went in.


I think the Enphase 190 (?) had a very high failure rate. Here is link to thread to professional solar installers forum from several years ago on this issue https://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/msg15093.html

Reportedly the factory and installers started to be far less generous on warranty replacements as the failure rate went up. For awhile I think they would authorize replacing all the 190s on the array.  

The 215s also had some failures but the percentages were far lower. I haven't seen a lot on the 250s. Many pros switched to Solar Edge optimizers as it gets some of the complexity off the roof and to where it is better environment.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 28, 2018)

peakbagger said:


> I think the Enphase 190 (?) had a very high failure rate. Here is link to thread to professional solar installers forum from several years ago on this issue https://www.mail-archive.com/re-wrenches@lists.re-wrenches.org/msg15093.html
> 
> Reportedly the factory and installers started to be far less generous on warranty replacements as the failure rate went up. For awhile I think they would authorize replacing all the 190s on the array.
> 
> The 215s also had some failures but the percentages were far lower. I haven't seen a lot on the 250s. Many pros switched to Solar Edge optimizers as it gets some of the complexity off the roof and to where it is better environment.



Thats what i have solar edge optimizers... im hoping they do well for me
Right now my production sucks. With that noreaster that we just had my production was 15kwh yesterday. Im looking forward the the leaves dropping from the trees so i get less shading.


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## peakbagger (Oct 28, 2018)

One of my arrays was covered with frozen snow for a day and a half. Talk about zero output . It warmed up and let loose yesterday.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 28, 2018)

I feel like i need to read more on my sloar system and get a better understanding of it and how it operates 
Snow already??? Has it been that cold there


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## peakbagger (Oct 28, 2018)

Yes we did get some early snow earlier in the week and some yesterday. All the big ski resorts are opening up as the temps are cold enough to run the snow guns. Its bragging rights, they don't have much terrain open but it gets folks thinking about skiing in the winter and buying seasons passes. If we don't have snow until later in the season folks tend not to buy passes and new gear. Long range winter forecast for my area and much of the northeast is warmer than normal but also wetter which means Northeasters and big weather swings.

If you search around on the web there is highly recommended book for folks considering solar

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470596783/?tag=hearthamazon-20

I have heard that an older edition my be available somewhere on the web as download but haven't looked.


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## Woodsplitter67 (Oct 28, 2018)

peakbagger said:


> Yes we did get some early snow earlier in the week and some yesterday. All the big ski resorts are opening up as the temps are cold enough to run the snow guns. Its bragging rights, they don't have much terrain open but it gets folks thinking about skiing in the winter and buying seasons passes. If we don't have snow until later in the season folks tend not to buy passes and new gear. Long range winter forecast for my area and much of the northeast is warmer than normal but also wetter which means Northeasters and big weather swings.
> 
> If you search around on the web there is highly recommended book for folks considering solar
> 
> ...



Thanks for the info. I woll look it up


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