Solar Archives - A Simple Life of Luxury https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/tag/solar/ Tales from a down-shifted family - Making the most of modest means in West Wales Tue, 09 Dec 2025 08:57:04 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/cropped-favicon-160x160.jpg Solar Archives - A Simple Life of Luxury https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/tag/solar/ 32 32 2696646 Maximising Solar and Off-Peak Tariffs: More Storage, More Savings https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2025/12/maximising-solar-and-off-peak-tariffs-more-storage-more-savings/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2025/12/maximising-solar-and-off-peak-tariffs-more-storage-more-savings/#respond Wed, 10 Dec 2025 10:43:00 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=47502 Having had our solar panels and home battery storage system for four years now, we’ve grown used to its capabilities and the money it saves us. It’s also given us time to evaluate it and decide where best to upgrade next. The obvious choice was to add more battery capacity — so that’s exactly what...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2025/12/maximising-solar-and-off-peak-tariffs-more-storage-more-savings/feed/ 0 47502 Improving the Efficiency of My Solar Panel Monitoring Plugin: Optimising PHP, MySQL, and Caching https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2025/01/improving-the-efficiency-of-my-solar-panel-monitoring-plugin-optimising-php-mysql-and-caching/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2025/01/improving-the-efficiency-of-my-solar-panel-monitoring-plugin-optimising-php-mysql-and-caching/#respond Wed, 29 Jan 2025 16:24:41 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=44753 As a part of my ongoing efforts to optimise and enhance the functionality of my solar panel monitoring plugin, I’ve recently made some significant improvements that have boosted its performance and security. If you’re interested in solar generation data or just want to know how to improve the efficiency of a WordPress plugin, this post...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2025/01/improving-the-efficiency-of-my-solar-panel-monitoring-plugin-optimising-php-mysql-and-caching/feed/ 0 44753 A Poor Solar Year https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2024/09/a-poor-solar-year/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2024/09/a-poor-solar-year/#respond Fri, 20 Sep 2024 10:47:56 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=43581 We don’t seem to have had much of a summer here this year. There has been the odd sunny day but no long spells of summery weather, and the solar panels know it! Sometimes it just feels as though the weather has been terrible but I thought I’d check the generation of the solar panels...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2024/09/a-poor-solar-year/feed/ 0 43581 A Solar Year https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2024/01/a-solar-year/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2024/01/a-solar-year/#comments Tue, 02 Jan 2024 10:19:48 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=41601 The weather has been terrible lately, so much rain and wind every day hat it has barely even gotten light. It’s a good job we have the Christmas decorations up to brighten things up a little. The solar panels haven’t been producing much. The daily yield graph for the past 20 days from my solar...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2024/01/a-solar-year/feed/ 4 41601 Solar Panels – Payback Time https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2023/12/solar-panels-payback-time/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2023/12/solar-panels-payback-time/#respond Mon, 11 Dec 2023 09:27:49 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=41441 Now that we’ve had our solar panels installed for over 2 years, I thought it was time to make sure we could compare the yield from them per year. As you can imagine in a country with such unpredictable weather the yield from the solar panels varies considerably. From day-to-day the variations are thanks to...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2023/12/solar-panels-payback-time/feed/ 0 41441 A Year of Solar https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/11/a-year-of-solar/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/11/a-year-of-solar/#respond Sun, 06 Nov 2022 09:14:00 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=38427 We’ve had just about a year of solar generation now. Time to take a look at the stats. That’s easy to do thanks to the solar stats pages I built on this website. The solar generation overview page shows today’s solar generation, along with some charts of generation over the past month, and some totals....

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/11/a-year-of-solar/feed/ 0 38427 Solar Shading https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/08/solar-shading/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/08/solar-shading/#respond Tue, 16 Aug 2022 09:05:00 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=38093 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...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/08/solar-shading/feed/ 0 38093 Solar Maximum https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/07/solar-maximum/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/07/solar-maximum/#comments Thu, 07 Jul 2022 07:40:00 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=37813 Just a quick update on ‘the solars’. As expected, both average daily production and total production from the solar panels has been increasing throughout the year. The graphs of these therefore look pretty good. There was quite a jump between February and March and then a gradual increase throughout March, April, May and June. We’re...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/07/solar-maximum/feed/ 3 37813 Nice! https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/06/nice/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/06/nice/#respond Thu, 23 Jun 2022 09:45:03 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=37765 Nice on the Beach We really can’t complain when the weather is like this. What better place to be. I had the day off so couldn’t resist a little paddle into Borth and back before it got too hot. Nice in the Sun We hit our maximum solar production yesterday as well with 29.3kWh. I...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/06/nice/feed/ 0 37765 Force Charging with a Solax Inverter and Battery https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/06/force-charging-with-a-solax-inverter-and-battery/ https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/06/force-charging-with-a-solax-inverter-and-battery/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2022 10:51:54 +0000 https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/?p=37684 I’ve had someone ask how to set things up so that their Solax Battery will force charge from cheap rate electricity overnight. So, rather than just reply to their question I thought I’d post a quick instructional blog post here with step by step instructions. The Solax App So, we generally do this using the...

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]]> https://www.alananna.co.uk/blog/2022/06/force-charging-with-a-solax-inverter-and-battery/feed/ 157 37684