Solar panel production figures

Macro said:
Annoyingly we've had no rain in the east since the start of May - my poor panels need a wash - just an hour heavy downpour would be lovely thanks :)
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my panels are really dusty and a lot of pooh on them. i havent tried but i am wondering if my pressure washer will have the grunt to fire a stream onto my top panels to give them a wash off... i may give it a go at the weekend.
 
bigmike20vt said:
my panels are really dusty and a lot of pooh on them. i havent tried but i am wondering if my pressure washer will have the grunt to fire a stream onto my top panels to give them a wash off... i may give it a go at the weekend.
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Seeing as you live near me and almost certainly in hard water area consider that before you do so.
Plenty of people do not recommend get hard water onto panels.

next week looks like perfect panel cleaning time. Especially tuesday
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Seeing as you live near me and almost certainly in hard water area consider that before you do so.
Plenty of people do not recommend get hard water onto panels.

next week looks like perfect panel cleaning time. Especially tuesday
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that is a good point... however we have a water softener due to as you say the awful hard water area we live in (nice for drinking water tho so we keep a hard water tap for that)
however you are right i should probably let nature sort it for me. (i may still have a quick go for "the science" however ;) )
 
Realised today (Doh!) why my generation figures are so low until around lunchtime

Its the odd way that Solax displays "yield", which you assume means generation but its not, its usage.

So early in the day the battery discharge that took place before solar generation means its too high, but then it seems to be too low. And it is / could be.
If the battery was low, then I could pump 6kwh, or more, into the battery and this would not be registered as yield, since its only yield when used.

I have been taking daily generation to be [yield - battery usage in evening]. Which seems to be pretty accurate, and was also fine whilst I was charging the battery to 100% just after midnight.
Now I am not, it means more goes into battery storage and it appears to make the in day numbers low.

Quite a silly system really.
But also means there were days when I under recorded generation in effect.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
that is a good point... however we have a water softener due to as you say the awful hard water area we live in (nice for drinking water tho so we keep a hard water tap for that)
however you are right i should probably let nature sort it for me. (i may still have a quick go for "the science" however ;) )
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Would you feed your pressure washer from inside?
I would feed mine from outside which is an unsoftened tap!

I have been having same thoughts in regards cleaning. Unless you have panels that are properly covered I think I would play safe and hold off.
My panels are split, so each is in effect two for arguments sake, so worst case is around 200w loss should one be massively compromised.

I have been thinking of various ways to clean them.
Top choice at the mo is one of the meaty super soakers!
I think you can actually get close to pressure washer/hose type pressure but with something thats far easier to handle.
Was thinking in regards trying to target and stand a chance of cleaning off bird poop.
 
Jokester said:
I’m thinking of getting a window cleaner to do mine on a regular basis. Tried to hose them down the other day but the grime is baked on.
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Our window cleaner wanted .... iirc close to £100 to clean mine.

sod that! i would rather lose a bit of efficiency between rain showers than pay that!.

as for our water softener that MKW asked about, we only have 1 unsoftened tap, the drinking tap, all the rest are soft. i had a tap fitted on the water softener ittself so if watering the garden (once water butt empty) or filling a paddling pool etc i just turn the softener off then turn it back on again.
 
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Realised today (Doh!) why my generation figures are so low until around lunchtime

Its the odd way that Solax displays "yield", which you assume means generation but its not, its usage.

So early in the day the battery discharge that took place before solar generation means its too high, but then it seems to be too low. And it is / could be.
If the battery was low, then I could pump 6kwh, or more, into the battery and this would not be registered as yield, since its only yield when used.

I have been taking daily generation to be [yield - battery usage in evening]. Which seems to be pretty accurate, and was also fine whilst I was charging the battery to 100% just after midnight.
Now I am not, it means more goes into battery storage and it appears to make the in day numbers low.

Quite a silly system really.
But also means there were days when I under recorded generation in effect.
Click to expand...
Our Fox inverter is equally silly. To get the generation figure you have to do:

(Charge kWh - discharge kWh - Grid consumption kWh) + feed-in kWh = generation
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Realised today (Doh!) why my generation figures are so low until around lunchtime

Its the odd way that Solax displays "yield", which you assume means generation but its not, its usage.
Click to expand...
I think it's a Chinese thing. Solis have similar. Whilst I can see generation / time charts, I have to resort to a simple energy monitor for a plain 'how much did it generate in total' figure.
 
My PV production goes through an energy monitor I had in place before instaling the AC coupled inverter, which also measures the PV using it's own CT clamp - but doesn't display the total production figure anywhere readable.
 
A perfect day here aswell. A record one too:



33.6kWh generated and 19.2kWh exported. Still ticking along at about 200w, so it might increase slightly. I think its as good as ill get from my SE facing 4.8kW system.
 
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