Solar Shading
During this recent heatwave we have had clear skies all day long. This gave me a chance to notice a dip in our solar production that seemed to follow a very simialr pattern each day. The following sequence of photos shows four days of solar production during this time. As you can see there is a characterisitc pattern every day at about 8:30am.
Something is obviously casting a shadow on our solar panels at this time of day. The only thing we can put it down to is a telegraph pole in our back garden. Oh well, there’s not much we can do about that. Otherwise production was good with a nice steady curve. There is some clipping at the top at this time of year and the production drops a little during the clipped period. Presumably this is due to the high temperatures that affect the efficiency of all the components.
On a more positive note, the long sunny days does mean that average daily production has been good so far in August. In fact it’s been better than the average producution for any previous month.
We are of course only half way throught the month so far so this could (and probably will) change. You’d expect August to be just a little worse than July really as the days are getting shorter. No doubt the second half of August will be grey and dreary so that things even out!
