Completely off-grid today!

[DamonHD]

The electrician is here inspecting and then rewiring a chunk of my consumer board and beyond to accept the power from my new PV.  (Mister can you spare a dime^Winverter?)

So my server and ADSL router are running from the off-grid system and my laptop is coasting from its internal batteries.

The house is really off the grid right now, and we're losing a bit of solar PV export that we would otherwise be proping up the UK grid with...

The only other thing that I have to remember is the fridge, while it coasts on its cool-th for few hours.

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

Complete Web server and ADSL modem off-grid again today while electrician is back to finish the wiring from the roof ready for the inverter (new 6mm twin+earth for the existing arrays, re-use existing 2.5mm for the new array probably).

Then just waiting for the inverter to get into my installer's hands to plug-n-play...  That's maybe a week away still.

Rgds

Damon

[Bruce S]

Complete Web server and ADSL modem off-grid again today while electrician is back to finish the wiring from the roof ready for the inverter (new 6mm twin+earth for the existing arrays, re-use existing 2.5mm for the new array probably).

Then just waiting for the inverter to get into my installer's hands to plug-n-play...  That's maybe a week away still.

Rgds

Damon

Damon;
 If it coming anywhere else eastward of UK you may be waiting even longer ALL flights are grounded while the volcano play with upper air stream.
Two of our Belgium Directors that were hoping to be home by now are spending another week here, ALL flight now booked until Friday coming out of St. Louis.
 

[DamonHD]

True, hadn't thought of that (was mainly gritting my teeth at the potential lost generation from my existing kit from all the crap in the air).

But the scarcity is the issue, not the freighting time, and these things are *heavy* (~25kg for ~£800 of equipment) so I should think that they travel by truck/train/boat rather than air for cost and footprint reasons!

Rgds

Damon

[wooferhound]

My wife is flying back from Russia on May 5th, I hope it's cleared up by then.
Of course it could spit enough ash out to put us back into an Ice-age . . .

[DamonHD]

My memory is too feeble to remember if I already posted this on a different thread...

I had noticed on Saturday that one of our inverters (for 1/4 of our panels) was reporting a fault with the a/c (mains) side of the wiring and had taken itself off-line. (Very handy is the little wireless display.)

I suspected a bad connection, but when I did a visual check later I saw that the electrician had put in too short a bus-bar that didn't reach the last circuit breaker, ie for the inverted reporting itself as off-line! Whoops.

He came back yesterday and fixed that, so all the existing PV is back and running (in this nice sunshine) and though my inverter was one of the few that had *not* turned up when expected yesterday at my installer's, I'm still hopeful that they'll get it in time to put it in this coming Monday.

Rgds

Damon

[Bruce S]

Damon;
 Good news is that some flights are beginning again.. So the volcano has decided to blow more stuff up in the air .
 Hope you get the inverter soon

Cheers
Bruce S

[DamonHD]

Finally the inverter and new total generation meter were installed today and the last section of my PV went live!

5.16kWp of grid-tie total on 4 strings, with 3xSB1100 and 1xSB1200 inverters.

It should generate ~4MWh/y.

Rgds

Damon

[Bruce S]

Damon;
   That is good news, glad to hear they arrived and all is up and working:)
Of course right after I move my small setup to a better section of the area, the clouds and rain move in. Output is almost not readable.
The Ghurd controllers haven't diverted power in days.
Did not know there was a Murphy for Solar like there is for 'mills :-)

Cheers;
Bruce S

[DamonHD]

There's a Murphy's Law for Murphy: you can't make the sun come out by covering your solar panels.

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

Just spiked over 4kW for the first time since installation (that I've noticed): nice to see the export meter flashing away!

We have a bank holiday weekend here in the UK, so naturally there is cloud and rain.  B^>

Rgds

Damon

[Junkie]

4Kw very nice, even more  impressive with the great UK weather!

[DamonHD]

Very nearly hit 30kWh (29.52 in fact) generated today on the first cloudless day since the new PV went live...

If you look at my avatar today, also:

http://www.earth.org.uk/WW-PV-roof/data-PV1/Eall.gif

you can see the spike up to nearly 30 dwarfing everything else.

It's a shame it took ages to get the inverter in (due to a Europe-wide shortage) as I missed what turns out to have been one of the sunniest Aprils in recent years:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/hi/uk_reviews/newsid_8662000/8662396.stm

Never mind, the next couple of days should be good also.

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

The system scraped over 30kWh (30.380) on the 24th, but since then we've had more cloud and less daily output.  Peak generation has been around solar noon and about 3.5kW.

Today, with scudding clouds and a lot of wind (and cooler) we had spikes just over 4kW.  Not sure if that's a 'cloud edge' effect or the lower temps possibly helped by the strong winds.

Rgds

Damon

[DamonHD]

I've just now seen a brief peak of 4.48kW (max rated inverter output would be 4.5kW) with a little haze and cloud around.

Rgds

Damon

[willib]

Hi Damon , I see the spikes on the up side , KWh produced, but on the downside is that usage?
or something else?

[DamonHD]

Our usage is a pretty constant 5kWh/day at the moment.

With all the weather we have from the direction of Siberia at the moment on good (cloudless) days the PV generates 30kWh, but on the very poorest days in the last month or so we have generated under 4kWh IIRC.

Does that answer your question, or did I misunderstand?

Rgds

Damon

[willib]

Yeah Thanks 

[PaulJ]

"Our usage is a pretty constant 5kWh/day at the moment."

That's bloody good for an on-grid household, particularly in a cold climate, takes some serious thought to get there. We use about 4kWh/day off-grid, 2 adults 3 kids mostly solar HW(gas boosted), wood heating.

I'm guessing you're not using electricity for heating/HW?

Do you get a premium for your exported power or are you just credited/paid at your normal purchase price?

Cheers,
Paul.

[DamonHD]

Gruesome detail here as to usage: http://www.earth.org.uk/saving-electricity.html#meter2010

Yes, it did take some work to get there at about half the UK average.  We generate 4MWh/y with PV, so are next exporters of about half of that over the course of a year.

We heat with natural gas from the mains.  Current usage is a little over 6MWh/y which I hope to get down to 5MWh/y by the end of this year, which might become 2MWh/y more electricity if I replace our gas combi with a decent R744/ECO-Cute ASHP.

We're not *that* cold being in the orbit of London with a useful heat-island effect and (usually) mild winters.

Rgds

Damon

PS. The FiT tariffs are paying a healthy amount *over* retail prices for every unit generated, which is therefore better than the net metering we were accidentally on before.  But there's separate rates for my old and new systems, blah blah blah .  All the details of the UK FiTs are here: http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/consultations/elec_financial/elec_financial.aspx