Solar panels and battery - any real world reccomendations?

Easily going to be my worst day of generation since the install on 1st July, sub 5kwh! Plenty of battery left though so should survive until it picks up tomorrow and the day after.
 
Yup by far my worst as well. 3kwh day, my worst before this in September was near to 10.

That brightness/sunlight makes a big difference.

Hazy cloud can be OK as long as some sunlight gets through.

Today not a single ray of sunshine, mostly raining. Had the lights on at 9AM as it was too dark :D
 
BUDFORCE said:
Did 11.3kwh today on a 4.5kw system, east of England.

Was cloudy here but hazy cloud.
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I am confused with the terminology. Do you mean you generated 11.3kw today? Isn't kWh for one hour?

My understanding is a 4.5kw systems max should be 4.5kWh (maybe a little less). So say you generated 11.3kw's of energy and there was 10 hours of sunlight that day, you avaraged 1.13kWh.

Maybe someone can clarify if I am not getting it.
 
TNA said:
I am confused with the terminology. Do you mean you generated 11.3kw today? Isn't kWh for one hour?

My understanding is a 4.5kw systems max should be 4.5kWh (maybe a little less). So say you generated 11.3kw's of energy and there was 10 hours of sunlight that day, you avaraged 1.13kWh.

Maybe someone can clarify if I am not getting it.
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11.3 kwh is the total
a 4.5kwh system is capable of a maximum generation of that amount in any one hour, ie 4.5kw, but thats perfect alignment, and peak sun etc so its a bell curve from zero to peak then back to zero with fluctuations for cloud and rain and temperature etc

IF you could keep the panels constantly facing the sun at the peak of summer intensity they would produce somewhere near to that permanently. Eg you kept them on the equator at the perfect alignment following mid day around the globe
 
TNA said:
I am confused with the terminology. Do you mean you generated 11.3kw today? Isn't kWh for one hour?

My understanding is a 4.5kw systems max should be 4.5kWh (maybe a little less). So say you generated 11.3kw's of energy and there was 10 hours of sunlight that day, you avaraged 1.13kWh.

Maybe someone can clarify if I am not getting it.
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
, and peak sun etc so its a bell curve from zero to peak then back to zero with fluctuations for cloud and rain and temperature etc

IF you could keep the panels constantly facing the sun at the peak of summer intensity they would produce somewhere near to that permanently. Eg you kept them on the equator at the perfect alignment following mid day around the globe
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Yea our installer wasn't able get our panels to do that unfortunately, knew I should have gotten more quotes.
 
Journey said:
A kWh is a exactly that a kilo-watt of energy for an hour. So you could generate 50kWh in one hour if you have enough panels and nothing for the rest of the day, in theory.
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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
11.3 kwh is the total
a 4.5kwh system is capable of a maximum generation of that amount in any one hour, ie 4.5kw, but thats perfect alignment, and peak sun etc so its a bell curve from zero to peak then back to zero with fluctuations for cloud and rain and temperature etc

IF you could keep the panels constantly facing the sun at the peak of summer intensity they would produce somewhere near to that permanently. Eg you kept them on the equator at the perfect alignment following mid day around the globe
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Yep. That is why I said max generated.

So should people not be saying they generated xxkw for the day? When people here say 11.3kwh for the day I get confused.
 
TNA said:
Yep. That why I said max generated.

So should people not be saying they generated xxkw for the day? When people here say 11.3kwh for the day I get confused.
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No, kW is a power rating, a number of kilo-watt-hours is the correct terminology.

e.g My kettle consumes 3.2kW in use, and uses 78Wh (or 0.078kWh) to boil 300ml of water.
 
My first really disappointing day considering the last few :)

What we need is a scheme like that one someone mentioned a few pages back where we can buy back our exported energy at a more reasonable price...

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Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
No they are correct they generated xxkwh
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That does not compute :p

If they were to store that energy all in a battery would they not need a 11.3kw battery as that is the amount of energy?

My understanding is say I use my computer 5 hours playing a game and it is using up 400wh, then the total energy I used is 2kw, not 2kwh.
 
Journey said:
No, kW is a power rating, a number of kilo-watt-hours is the correct terminology.

e.g My kettle consumes 3.2kW in use, and uses 78Wh (or 0.078kWh) to boil 300ml of water.
Click to expand...

Just saw this post. I see. I need to get grips with the terminology then it seems. Is my post above completely wrong then? :p
 
TNA said:
That does not compute :p

If they were to store that energy all in a battery would they not need a 11.3kw battery as that is the amount of energy?

My understanding is say I use my computer 5 hours playing a game and it is using up 400wh, then the total energy I used is 2kw, not 2kwh.
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Energy is measured in usage over time, so a pc using 400watts for an hour is 0.4kwh.
 
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HungryHippos said:
Energy is measured in usage over time, so a pc using 400watts for an hour is 0.4kwh.
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Thanks. So over 5 hours we would just say we used 2kwh :)

Weird thing is, I always understood that energy is measured over time. The part it seems I got wrong was thinking say a kettle a 2kW heater was on for 2 hours one would say it used 4kW of energy. In my head say you had a 5kW battery at home then you would have used 4kW of it and there would be 1kW left in it. Basically my thought was one uses the kWh to measure how many kW is used.
 
TNA said:
Thanks. So over 5 hours we would just say we used 2kwh :)

Weird thing is, I always understood that energy is measured over time. The part it seems I got wrong was thinking say a kettle a 2kW heater was on for 2 hours one would say it used 4kW of energy. In my head say you had a 5kW battery at home then you would have used 4kW of it and there would be 1kW left in it. Basically my thought was one uses the kWh to measure how many kW is used.
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Yeah you were not far off, as you said, but kw is more current usage now, and kwh the "what if I was using this many watts for an hour" type scenario.

I'd generally use kw to describe how much a kettle can use, or how much power my house would be drawing at the moment, but neither would accurately tell me consumption based on kwh usage, kettle being high powered but short duration, and load power always changing based on background activity.
 
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TNA said:
Thanks. So over 5 hours we would just say we used 2kwh :)

Weird thing is, I always understood that energy is measured over time. The part it seems I got wrong was thinking say a kettle a 2kW heater was on for 2 hours one would say it used 4kW of energy. In my head say you had a 5kW battery at home then you would have used 4kW of it and there would be 1kW left in it. Basically my thought was one uses the kWh to measure how many kW is used.
Click to expand...

Is that not true then? It makes sense to me that it is correct, and there would be enough juice left for 30 minutes more of use of the kettle. :confused: maybe the terminology is slightly wrong, but the gist of the calculations are right?
 
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