Qualified Solar PV installer in the UK. A lot of really useful information in here; especially the material about east-west systems. Our houses typically have steeper roofs, which helps, but good to see a direct comparison of east-west versus north-south.
Neat observation. My home has opposite situation as the the tilt angle and temperature makes the winter peaks 1.5kw higher than summer months. My roof angle is 37 degrees and I am on a 35 degrees latitude in SE USA. The tilt is also a major factor and the roof pitch is the driver for this variable.
Good point, my findings are only for my system and others like it, but there will be various reasons why others will experience variations. That's one thing I've found with solar, the power output varies a lot depending on many varied variables from both the installation as well as environmental variables. Thanks for watching!
Very interesting !! Your 9.98kwp south facing array produced 44.11kWh on 06/20 and your neighbour’s 7.41kwp east facing array produced 50.38 kWh on the same day. More energy (14% more) from a smaller system (25% smaller) with suboptimal orientation. Why do you think is that? Would be interesting to know your neighbour’s roof pitch
The June 20th 2018 date looked at is when my solar array was actually 6.38 kW of panels whereas my East only facing neighbors at that time was 7.41 kW. I believe I mentioned that in the video but for this video I maybe should have temporarily changed my system size to 6.38 kW in the SolarEdge system settings to avoid this confusion.
By power consumption I assume you mean electricity. Not everyone heats their home with electricity. In my experience most people don't heat their home with electricity. In my area natural gas is what most people use. Including all forms of energy, I agree it's much higher in the winter. The delta in temperature between the outside and inside of a home is much higher in the winter vs summer. In my case I'm only talking about electricity, and also in my case we're using natural gas to heat our home so our electricity consumption is much lower in the winter. All of my neighbors that I know of are in my same situation; higher electricity bills in the summer.
If you want more details about my south facing system you can access the guest portal here monitoringpublic.solaredge.com/solaredge-web/p/site/public?name=Electric Tech Adventures#/dashboard and there's a small csv download button in the top right corner of each section. Annoyingly you can't download an entire year of daily data at once. You have to download each month at a time then combine them together yourself if that's what you're after. I don't have a guest portal for my neighbors with the east west system. I can download their csv files, but I don't know what data you're looking for and it's not possible to send attachments through UA-cam comments.
@@ElectricTechAdventures This link will not work in the UK. Showing all the graphs as you did was good but showing them overlapping will give people a better idea of the difference between the different facing of the solar.
That's weird, I don't know why the link is restricted in the UK. Perhaps I'll do another version of this video showing the additional years of data since then. I'm pretty behind on my editing of videos I've already recorded though so it won't be soon.
What level of production do you think I should be getting? I have power optimizers under each panel that are paired with a string inverter on the side of the house. The optimizers allow each panel to function independent of all the others. The string inverter has higher efficiency than micro inverters. Overall my system should perform better or at minimum the same as micro inverters.
@@ElectricTechAdventures thank you for the info. I’m in the market for solar, so I’ve been trying to figure out what size system to get. I would have expected that in the summer months, you would have been producing maybe 80-90% of your kWh capacity. I don’t understand why your system is so much below that. I wouldn’t have guessed that you’d only produce 50%. Is that standard?
@@2triangles The biggest issue in the summer is the solar panels produce less electricity when they're hot. Also panels produce best when pointed directly at the sun. My panels are on my roof which is at an angle not pointed directly up. In the summer the sun is nearly directly overhead in the middle of the day. For these reasons solar panels produce best in the spring and fall. In order to get near the 100% produce of a panel you'd have to install a solar tracker that moves the panel throughout the day to follow the sun. Those are far more expensive than simply installing more solar panels that are fixed in place and produce less than 100%. In my experience my solar array produces better than most rooftop solar arrays because it's south facing and has zero shade at any point in the day. That being said east west facing panels are alright, just a little less production. I made a video on my channel last year that compares my production against one of my neighbors who has east west facing panels so check that out if you're interested.
Something I forgot to mention is you stated I'm getting like half efficiency. The reality is I'm maxing out my inverter which is a 7.6 kW inverter and it's gotten up to 7.89 kW output before. You'd probably wonder why it's so much smaller than the 9.98 kW of solar panels and it's because of what I said before about it's cheaper to just put more panels than it is to have solar trackers. Having more panels increases the solar output sooner and later in the day, but it does clip a little in the middle of the day in the spring, but not in the summer because of the heat. It's generally considered a good idea to oversize an array 20-30% more to be able to maximize the inverter's capabilities and maximize it's efficiency.
Qualified Solar PV installer in the UK. A lot of really useful information in here; especially the material about east-west systems. Our houses typically have steeper roofs, which helps, but good to see a direct comparison of east-west versus north-south.
Cool, I'm glad to hear it!
Neat observation. My home has opposite situation as the the tilt angle and temperature makes the winter peaks 1.5kw higher than summer months. My roof angle is 37 degrees and I am on a 35 degrees latitude in SE USA. The tilt is also a major factor and the roof pitch is the driver for this variable.
Good point, my findings are only for my system and others like it, but there will be various reasons why others will experience variations. That's one thing I've found with solar, the power output varies a lot depending on many varied variables from both the installation as well as environmental variables. Thanks for watching!
Outstanding
My 27kW can produce 150kWh/day summer and as low as 10kWh winter.
Wow you've got a lot of solar! Thanks for the insight.
Very interesting !!
Your 9.98kwp south facing array produced 44.11kWh on 06/20 and your neighbour’s 7.41kwp east facing array produced 50.38 kWh on the same day. More energy (14% more) from a smaller system (25% smaller) with suboptimal orientation.
Why do you think is that? Would be interesting to know your neighbour’s roof pitch
The June 20th 2018 date looked at is when my solar array was actually 6.38 kW of panels whereas my East only facing neighbors at that time was 7.41 kW. I believe I mentioned that in the video but for this video I maybe should have temporarily changed my system size to 6.38 kW in the SolarEdge system settings to avoid this confusion.
You did mention it multiple times in the video.
@@tamidis5500
He did indeed
Power consumption is FAR higher in the winter. It's a lot harder to heat a house than cool it. Plus, you're inside much more using all the juice.
By power consumption I assume you mean electricity. Not everyone heats their home with electricity. In my experience most people don't heat their home with electricity. In my area natural gas is what most people use. Including all forms of energy, I agree it's much higher in the winter. The delta in temperature between the outside and inside of a home is much higher in the winter vs summer. In my case I'm only talking about electricity, and also in my case we're using natural gas to heat our home so our electricity consumption is much lower in the winter. All of my neighbors that I know of are in my same situation; higher electricity bills in the summer.
Have you got a table of each of them to compare?
If you want more details about my south facing system you can access the guest portal here monitoringpublic.solaredge.com/solaredge-web/p/site/public?name=Electric Tech Adventures#/dashboard and there's a small csv download button in the top right corner of each section. Annoyingly you can't download an entire year of daily data at once. You have to download each month at a time then combine them together yourself if that's what you're after. I don't have a guest portal for my neighbors with the east west system. I can download their csv files, but I don't know what data you're looking for and it's not possible to send attachments through UA-cam comments.
@@ElectricTechAdventures This link will not work in the UK.
Showing all the graphs as you did was good but showing them overlapping will give people a better idea of the difference between the different facing of the solar.
That's weird, I don't know why the link is restricted in the UK. Perhaps I'll do another version of this video showing the additional years of data since then. I'm pretty behind on my editing of videos I've already recorded though so it won't be soon.
Thanks for the video. Surprised you're not getting more production from your panels. Do you have micro inverters or a string inverter?
What level of production do you think I should be getting? I have power optimizers under each panel that are paired with a string inverter on the side of the house. The optimizers allow each panel to function independent of all the others. The string inverter has higher efficiency than micro inverters. Overall my system should perform better or at minimum the same as micro inverters.
@@ElectricTechAdventures thank you for the info. I’m in the market for solar, so I’ve been trying to figure out what size system to get. I would have expected that in the summer months, you would have been producing maybe 80-90% of your kWh capacity. I don’t understand why your system is so much below that. I wouldn’t have guessed that you’d only produce 50%. Is that standard?
@@2triangles The biggest issue in the summer is the solar panels produce less electricity when they're hot. Also panels produce best when pointed directly at the sun. My panels are on my roof which is at an angle not pointed directly up. In the summer the sun is nearly directly overhead in the middle of the day. For these reasons solar panels produce best in the spring and fall. In order to get near the 100% produce of a panel you'd have to install a solar tracker that moves the panel throughout the day to follow the sun. Those are far more expensive than simply installing more solar panels that are fixed in place and produce less than 100%. In my experience my solar array produces better than most rooftop solar arrays because it's south facing and has zero shade at any point in the day. That being said east west facing panels are alright, just a little less production. I made a video on my channel last year that compares my production against one of my neighbors who has east west facing panels so check that out if you're interested.
Something I forgot to mention is you stated I'm getting like half efficiency. The reality is I'm maxing out my inverter which is a 7.6 kW inverter and it's gotten up to 7.89 kW output before. You'd probably wonder why it's so much smaller than the 9.98 kW of solar panels and it's because of what I said before about it's cheaper to just put more panels than it is to have solar trackers. Having more panels increases the solar output sooner and later in the day, but it does clip a little in the middle of the day in the spring, but not in the summer because of the heat. It's generally considered a good idea to oversize an array 20-30% more to be able to maximize the inverter's capabilities and maximize it's efficiency.
@@ElectricTechAdventures All of that is extremely helpful. Thank you so much, brother.