To the blog follower who wondered if I'd fallen off the end of the Earth, I haven't. You know who you are! :-)
I have skipped a month and re-engaged with the turn-of-the-month blogs. Boy is it good to see the Sun. There was a sharp upturn in the insolation and subsequent generation of the panels which was presumably due entirely to the change in the weather. Another nice piece of news is that from 1 April, the Feed-in Tariff has been raised from 41.3p to 43.3p, a rise of 4.8 percent, in line with the RPI. So to figures and graphs. This is the overall generation since installation. The orange line is the 30-day average while the yellow line is the overall average:
The change in illumination is clear and the 30-day average has a very steep rise as we get out of winter and into spring. It's no wonder that life shuts down in the cold months given the lack of light and therefore energy. To give a little more detail, here's the last three months of that graph:
In last few days, there has been a reestablishment of the usual Atlantic sequence of weather fronts and their associated blankets of cloud which has put a brake on the springtime improvement in generation. So where does the system stand with respect to predictions? I've just passed 2,080 units so would like to gain another 400 before 18 May to match initial expectations. There are 47 days to go so I'd need to average 8.5 between now and then. For a prediction, lets look at the same period on the opposite side of the winter solstice - 24 July to 9 September. Then I gained 506 units which is a good omen because, if that performance is repeated, I should be 100 units over my target and £43 better off. 30-day average is currently 6.04 and the overall average is 6.52, gently up from its low of 6.46 in mid-March. It should pass the 6.79 target I want to reach before May 18 if the above predictions hold out.
Finally, to the chap who I met in Ossett, Yorkshire yesterday who took much interest in my panel stories, I hope you find this blog interesting. It was written for folk like you. You also know who you are.
