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Forum Index : Solar : Hi from the UK, here is my output!
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zaphod Regular Member  Joined: 03/06/2018 Location: United KingdomPosts: 93 |
Hi All, 1st post here so I hope the image works! This is the output of my 1Kwp system here in the UK at Lat52n Vertical axis is average Kwh/day, horizontal is hours so data is for the last 11 months. Winter here is December to Feb! I should add this is a DIY system (except the panels) and is mainly used for water heating with whatever is left over consumed by the house, nothing is exported!  Cheers Roger 1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :) |
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| Warpspeed Guru  Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Welcome to the Forum Zaphod. Another true believer, you have come to the right place. Its winter down here in oZ, 5C this morning here, but still able to live off the sun's power quite comfortably. Cheers, Tony. |
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| zaphod Regular Member Joined: 03/06/2018 Location: United KingdomPosts: 93 |
Hi Tony, thank you for your reply, I guess your system is quite big. I am a believer in both DIY and ECO, my efforts are primitive but it's a contribution :) I also collect rainwater for toilet flushing etc (actually I love to shower in it too, my wife isn't so sure!!). Here is a system diagram of the solar system at the moment, I drew it for my wife :) Here in the UK older houses like this one have an insulated hot water storage cylinder fitted with an electric heater in case the boiler/furnace fails and that is how I heat the hot water from PV.  Cheers Roger 1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :) |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
Collected rainwater can be pretty filthy. Bird droppings, feathers, dead insects, dust and pollution fallout all get washed into the big tank in which some very strange life forms can flourish. Great for toilet flushing or for the garden, but probably not much else... Cheers, Tony. |
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Madness Guru Joined: 08/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2498 |
There are lots of us here in Australia that live on rain water, I have virtually all my life and it has not killed me yet. There are only 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't. |
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| zaphod Regular Member Joined: 03/06/2018 Location: United KingdomPosts: 93 |
Have you been talking to my wife  More seriously I dont collect from the main tiled roof but I have a plastic side shelter for the car that the pigeons don't roost on that I use, much lower capacity but much cleaner, then there's 3 stages of settling out and it's heated to 60C before I get to shower in it :) Stuff heading for the toilet doesnt get heated and only has two stages of settling. I thought about this quite a bit before installing it and I dont have an underground tank where I think the sludge would buildup, I have a small (~2galls) collector just under the side shelter roof outside that filtered (through netting) gutter water runs into. That is then pumped into the main tank in the loft/attic where there is enough capacity to store about 28 gallons. That lasts maybe a few days if it doesnt rain anymore, like all my ECO gadgets it's a contribution rather than a total solution :) I have to clean the outdoor collector maybe once or twice a year, its wrapped in black plastic to reduce algie growth and clean the gutter filter maybe four times a year. The outdoor pump is heated as we get freezing temperatures or below for days at a time here! Cheers Roger 1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :) |
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renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
Yes, well that explains a bit then! Just teasing mate, I used to run a sheep farm, one day the owner came and saw me drinking water from the tap and said it wasn't a good idea, well I'd been doing it for years and never got sick. She was surprised. I'd be more worried about what paint was on a tin roof than what bacteria there was in the water. Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| Warpspeed Guru Joined: 09/08/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 4406 |
A very long time ago I heard a story from outback Australia about a bush "cocky" that bought himself one of those new black and white television sets. His wife and kids loved it, but complained that ever since they got that TV, the water tasted funny. It turned out that they mounted the TV antenna right over the water tank, and the local birds liked to perch on the antenna. Cheers, Tony. |
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| renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
Reckon that was a wives tale Tony, cocky's (that means farmer for non Aussies)tend to know their surrounds pretty well, it's amazing what a cocky will notice a city fella wouldn't, and vice vera in the city. So Zap, how many Kwhr a day are you getting ATM? Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| zaphod Regular Member Joined: 03/06/2018 Location: United KingdomPosts: 93 |
Lols I like cocky's I am surrounded by them :) Cloud cover almost 100% here and it's been like that for a week or so, weekly average down to 1.9Kwh/day and yesterdays total for example was just 1.1Kwh not really enough to maintain the hot water but I keep hoping for a break in the cloud otherwise I will have to do a boiler burn  Cheers Roger 1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :) |
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yahoo2 Guru Joined: 05/04/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1166 |
Plenty of downsides to living in the semi-desert No swanky coffee shops or night clubs but one thing I am not short of is sunshine.  it is supposed to be winter, I got sunburned today. I think I saw a cloud yesterday. I'm confused, no wait... maybe I'm not... |
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| zaphod Regular Member Joined: 03/06/2018 Location: United KingdomPosts: 93 |
Well I live in the UK countryside also no swanky coffee shops or night clubs, but nooo bloody sun either hahaha At least the sun came out after I wrote the last post and saved me a boiler burn so maybe we are getting to the end of a dull period. June here is the beginning of summer BUT the interpretation of summer varies a bit around the world, here it means it just about warm enough to wear shorts sometimes but only the crazies swim in the sea  (crazies being to young to know or to old to care)!I am guessing being in the desert you use most of that lovely solar power for aircon ? Cheers Roger 1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :) |
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| renewableMark Guru Joined: 09/12/2017 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1678 |
Yahoo, am I reading that graph correct? Your average daily kwhr for dec is 11.2? That seems very low for a full days production in summer, is it a small system? Cheers Caveman Mark Off grid eastern Melb |
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| yahoo2 Guru Joined: 05/04/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1166 |
No, I have reasonable insulation, I use an evaporative cooler about 10 days a year. unless we get a real heatwave that lasts for 3 weeks, then it gets a bit hot. Hi Mark, these numbers was extrapolated from 3 fancy 320 watt LG panels I had for testing so it is a fraction over 1 kw. What I didn't realise when I had them was they are bi-facial, I think I could have squeezed quite a bit more out of them with the right mounts and a better reflective surface underneath. pretty sure I wrote "per kw" or something like that on the graph, I should have saved it as a gif, I didn't think it would be quite that small as a jpeg. I'm confused, no wait... maybe I'm not... |
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Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
Yahoo2, I like your fancy graph  .What kind of gear would I require to record something like this? I have no smart inverters, just the home built ones and 5Kw of mostly second hand panels. All solar power goes to battery charging, no grid exporting. Unfortunately I did not get a keyboard & mouse for my first birthday, they were not even thought of back then. So something plug in and with minimal 'fiddling' would be ideal .Or am I just wishful thinking? Klaus |
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| yahoo2 Guru Joined: 05/04/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1166 |
Yeah probably, its not actually on a real system, it is an old mobile test bench a group of us used for checking the quality of the panels we were buying and to use as a benchmark against a newly installed system. I hacked a datalogger into a davis weather station so it would transfer it to a computer with weather data that matched. it is pretty clunky, I usually just export to excel or libreoffice calc. i am trialing a thing called Grafana for some home automation gear, I still haven't got my head around the database management but it looks OK. The problem with working systems is there are losses, someone made us a motorised auto adjusting load that supposedly holds the max power point continuously. Very fiddly to calibrate. I'm confused, no wait... maybe I'm not... |
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| zaphod Regular Member Joined: 03/06/2018 Location: United KingdomPosts: 93 |
Stats are difficult if you want to do them over a long period because you have to choose a lasting record format, in my case early on I developed a logger seperate from the converter releving the latter from all responsability except spitting out its current power at ~1hZ serially. The logger (that consumes <100mW) counts up these spits with the aid of an accurate real time clock and accumalates them in a 32Kx8 serial EEPROM hourly, this along with the tank temperature produces a massive file that I dump to a PC maybe bi-monthly in ASCII. From there it's massaged in C using Cygwin from where it eventually gets plotted using Gnuplot that can be persuaded to produce various output file formats such as png rendered here! There are sites like https://www.pvoutput.org/ to compare your output to others if you can be bothered to massage your figures to there format and it just seems an ego trip for californians to prove they can outdoo everybody else  PS my data is real Cheers Roger 1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :) |
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| Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
Thanks guys, looks like I have to do my wishful thinking about something else. Now, If I only were 50 years younger..... Klaus |
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| zaphod Regular Member Joined: 03/06/2018 Location: United KingdomPosts: 93 |
Well maybe there are other less DIY ways to get the same thing or similar :) First one that comes to mind would be an illumanance logger that may be available off the shelf, the sensor being placed amongs your panels to log the daily illumanance, if your panels and system are in good shape its a simple translation from illumanance to watts. Alternatevly there are many voltage loggers on the market and maybe somebody somewhere makes an adapter to be able to log watts (combine current and voltage inputs into a voltage only output). A bit of serching on the likes of Fleabay might turn up something :) Cheers Roger 1Kwp DIY PV + Woodburner + Rainwater scavanger :) |
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