Week four update

It's kinda good that the panels were installed just before midsummer. It means I have the joy of quickly seeing how much they can make when the Sun is at its highest in the year. Come the week after next, the days start to get shorter as we head towards winter. Cheery, aren't I?

So to this final weekly report on the system's output. I'll change to monthly updates after this. Here's the results:

Day 22: 5.2

Day 23: 15.0

Day 24: 21.3

Day 25: 16.5

Day 26: 17.2

Day 27: 11.2

Day 28: 14.7

The highlight is day 24. Being so near to the summer solstice, 21.3 units might represent the very highest the panels can reach - unless we get a belter of a day in the next week or two. Also, there was one fully overcast day. It's interesting to note that the week includes what appear to be a minimum and a maximum day, and that one appears to be a quarter of the other. Overall, the week's performance was pretty good with 101.1 units generated, yielding £41.75.

Once again, the average daily generation has risen; it's now 13.76 units a day since I started. My hope is that by 18 May 2011, and having gone through winter, it will be above 6.85. 11 months to go. In six months, I'll be finding out what the generation is like over the winter solstice.

Let's look at the total generation each week. This will smooth out some of the daily variations:

Week 1: 92 kWh

Week 2: 93.6 kWh

Week 3: 98.5 kWh

Week 4: 101.1 kWh

So that's a gentle rise as we head towards the solstice, and indeed, one wonders whether 100 units are about as much as the system will be able to produce in a week.

I phoned EDF to check on the progress of my contract for the payment of the Feed-in Tariff. They say it's all progressing well and I ought to hear from them in about 2 weeks. Also, now that I have a receipted invoice from Installation Company, that has to be sent to Energy Saving Scotland as proof of purchase. Meantime, I'm well chuffed with my system and it's ticking along well. Unless there is anything else to report, I'll be back in a month.

Week three update

The third week of solar production had a much more even look to it which reflected the more changeable weather we've seen. However, there was a consistent run of four days with above average sun. Here are the units of electricity produced each day:

Day 15: 7.7

Day 16: 17.4

Day 17: 17.1

Day 18: 17.8

Day 19: 18.5

Day 20: 8.5

Day 21: 11.5

This was a total of 98.5 units and a FiT income (eventually) of £40.68. That's a pretty good week. The relatively sunny days meant that my average rose slightly to 13.53 units a day, well clear of my 6.85 target for the year.

So to the highlights this week. The main event was a letter from Energy Saving Scotland (ESS). My loan funds were released. I visited Installation Company to pay the balance of the funds owed to them. They will post me out a receipted invoice which I have to send to ESS as proof of purchase. Repayments will be spread over 8 years. It was a chance to chat to them and one of the bosses asked me to explain the operation of the spreadsheet I had given him to monitor generation. I also mentioned to them that the panels had outperformed their rated capacity. Robert, their installer, suggested maybe that was a good batch of panels - a little more efficient than normal. Maybe.

I did manage to catch the system reading 3,609 watts output at one point myself, so good to confirm my son's similar reading last week.

There has been no word back from EDF Energy about my FiT arrangement. I'm assuming that reading I took two weeks ago when I filled out their form is the relevant one to base their payments on. When I get a day off, I might phone them to chase this up.

Meanwhile, I'll make one more weekly update of the generation figures before going to monthly updates.