Solar performance #s
I posted some of this on another board and thought it might interest some seeing there are a lot of solar system installs on rv using folks here. Here are some numbers from the past year. Habit from t...
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Almot wrote:Chum lee wrote:
about 2pm. They have +-30Kw of fixed solar panels on the roof. With a thin cloud layer at about 10,000 feet (sun visible through clouds) the LCD monitor screen showed the total instantaneous output to be 3kw. Not impressive at all!
3KW could be what their loads demanded?
Like I said, my system gets topped up before noon, if there is any sun. At that point batteries are very close to full (more in AGM, less in flooded), and controller output drops to a trickle, except for what loads demand.
Here is estimated AC output for flat 1.1 KW (for example) in El Centro CA. In line with what I and others observed. You can get estimates for most US cities, based on long-term statistics: http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/.
Month kWH
January 150
February 136
March 172
April 178
May 174
June 161
July 158
August 165
September 159
October 151
November 142
December 146
According to the store manager and the store monitoring system, the system feeds any excess power generated back to Southern California Edison (which is credited against their current usage) as do most grid tied solar systems in California. ALDI is a +-12,000 sq. ft. retail store with solar panels covering about a 30% of the roof area. On a good day in the summer I've seen the output as high as 25 Kw so winter sun and slight cloud cover takes a big hit on the solar output.
Chum lee
