December
The plan to switch to EON didn’t go well. They tried to charge me more than I
thought I had signed up for, well I did sign up for actually, I have the
printout so I told them where to go and let Scottish Power keep my business. If
nothing else their Call Centre people are always very helpful though maybe it
helps that I once worked in Glasgow and know the dialect fairly well. The price
has gone up rather a lot since my last contract with them.
December started well and then went right down the drain. The year ended 120
kilowatt hours down on 2011 even though it was seven days shorter due to the
installation date and the Leap Year.
Month’s generation : 86·38 kWh.
November
My supply contract with Scottish Power ends on 3rd December so I looked
around for a replacement and found EON to be cheapest for me, they have actually
said they will take a smaller monthly direct debit than Scottish in recent
months. I have used EON before and they were perfectly OK apart from several
times trying to raise my direct debit payments and getting the arithmetic wrong.
However the interesting thing is that Scottish Power said I had used 2,552 units of
electricity in the past 12 months and in the year before the solar panels were
installed the figure was close to 7,000. That cannot
all be due to the solar installation, I switched most of the house to low energy
lamps and turn the desktop computer off more often than I did, and maybe the
home cinema gets used less often than before.
Month’s generation : 140·33 kWh.
October
The hopes of exceeding last October’s output rapidly disappeared after the 17th
when the sun disappeared and wasn’t seen again in the South East of the country
for the rest of the month.
My neighbour who has a system 4% bigger than mine saw his output fall to less
than 80% of my own by the end of September and it wasn’t difficult to trace it
to a tree at the 11:30 a.m. position some 35 feet tall and 30 feet from his
house. In high summer the sun looked over it but not in Autumn. Having had it
removed at a cost of about eight months’ electricity his output is now back up at
104% of my own where it should be.
Month’s generation : 197·58 kWh.
September
The year’s prediction total was achieved on the last day of the month, last year
it was achieved on the 26th September. This may sound like a good score but it
overlooks the fact that system installation wasn’t completed until the evening
of 6th January last year and 2012 is a leap year. So that’s a seven days advantage
for 2012 and production is still lagging four days behind. But with no Summer to
speak of it's a lot better than one might have guessed.
Month’s generation : 360·31 kWh.
August
There’s no further chance of any day going over 20kWh this year, so that makes
nine in 2012 against the 13 of 2011.
Month’s generation : 403·58 kWh.
July
Another rotten month. By day 213 of the year (31st July) generation reached 2065·97 units.
On the equivalent day last year the figure was 2283·22.
Month’s generation : 395·68 kWh.
June
A rubbish month by any standards, it is surprising to have got anywhere near the 100% of prediction
mark given the absence of sunshine, but it wasn’t the only PV disaster this month.
When my system was installed I thought it would save money to use a low powered
kettle, more likely to draw current within the panels’ normal output. However
when I discovered that my meter was prepared to feed the mains as if the grid
was one big battery there was no point in having a 750 watt kettle. That
situation changed with the new meter and the kettle was brought into use. After
fewer than 20 uses it failed. The light comes on but the water stays cold. I
won’t be buying anything from Russell Hobbs again.
The generation meter continues to run nearly 1·4% ahead of the inverter reading
recorded below and elsewhere.
Month’s generation : 359·11 kWh.
May
Since the two colour Month graphs were introduced last month the blue of the
Month histogram hasn't matched the shade of the Day histogram. This was rectified
on 5th May but will not be applied retrospectively. It will cause
the full year display to become two tone
blue but is far too labour intensive to put right.
The panels were disconnected from about 09:40 until 10:00 on 16th May while the
main electricity meter was changed, it being 25 years old.
May has been the second worst month on record - with reference to the prediction
- but also included the second best day ever, and the third. A bit of a disaster
overall that will likely have a big impact on the annual achievement.
Month’s generation : 368·62 kWh.
April
On the first of the month the website was rearranged so that solar data takes
precedence, it no longer appears within a folder named ‘solar’. All bookmarks,
favourites etc. should automatically redirect and reach the correct page. Browser
History files and cached pages may play havoc with this until they expire or are cleared.
On the 3rd, and following an apparently successful attempt to deter pigeons with
mesh between panels and tiles, the gutter was cleared of up to two inches of
pigeon poo and twigs. While there it was observed that the panels were filthy
with a layer of sand or similar which had also adorned cars recently. They were
given a good hose down two days before the hosepipe ban came into force.
On the 16th the software that produces the Month histogram was modified so that
days are shown in red if they fail to meet target. Blue if they do. At the time
of writing it has some issues - the shades of blue appear to vary.
EDF Energy popped round to say my meter needs replacing as it is 25 years old.
This is true, I moved here to a new house on 7th May 1987. They offered to do
the job straight away but the rain started to tip down again and the installer
decided he’d rather do something else. The software problems that caused the
Month graphs not to go red when required seems to have been fixed, by the simple
expedient of sending the routine round the loop twice. It appears to be a
function of Excel 2003. A single loop works fine on 2007.
Month’s generation : 318·07 kWh.
March
On the 2nd a fourth solar installation arrived on the local scene making
four houses out of six in the road. It is 4% bigger than mine and achieved by
placing panels closer to the roof edge than is generally considered advisable.
The roof is absolutely identical to my own but with a very slight chance of
shading by a tree. It is also about 15 feet nearer the equator but not otherwise
different! His generation meter is generally registering four to five percent
higher than my inverter records, and as that registers about 1·2% lower
than my generation meter that is exactly what one would expect.
The pigeon man came back on the 20th and took away all the spikes and replaced
them with a heavy gauge mesh which has been clipped to the underside open
aluminium edge of the panel frames. It has been cut to follow the tile contour. He did
the same for all four installations in the street.
Immediately afterwards I saw up to six pairs of pigeons looking very puzzled but
they are beginning to go away. By the end of the month their number was usually
reduced to only one or two pairs.
On Monday 26th the inverter was moved to a more convenient position; hence
the lack of output on a sunny morning. A new garage door is to be fitted and its
track is wider and lower than the old one.
Within the next few days I intend to take this website out of the solar folder
at this domain and install it in the root. The remainder of the pages at
the domain will be transferred elsewhere. I shall attempt to set the redirects
appropriately but if it proves to be too complicated you may have to change your
bookmarks, links etc.
Month’s generation : 322·65 kWh.
February
A close neighbour with an identical house asked my supplier, Solstice Energy,
the price of a system the same as mine. £10,013 with a power increase from 3·29
to 3·5kW. It would appear that I would have been better off if I
had not invested in solar a year ago. (Price reduction of £2,000, FIT and power
supply savings slightly under £2,000 and interest lost on the capital sum.)
There is a new problem with vermin getting under the panels. I have heard the
noises before but now I have seen what causes them. A hungry squirrel goes under
the panels and comes out with pigeon egg on his face. I’m not sure whether the squirrel
is to be welcomed or not.
The 29th saw my neighbour’s new system begin installation making the numbers four out
of six adjacent houses. I took the opportunity to go up on to the scaffold for a
closer look but it was the west facing installation next door which caught my
eye. Its cables were hanging loose over the roof and not concealed by the
panels. Far worse was that the corner of three panels are badly damaged and have gone a white
opaque shade where one would expect that deep bluish colour. I have heard the
system is doing very badly which I had put down to the westerly aspect but now I
am not so sure. I understand that the system was put in by a gang of Eastern
Europeans who spoke no English. I think my pigeon problem is probably minor by
comparison.
The new owner looked into Rent a Roof before eventually buying his own panels.
An agent for a company called Future Roof offered to install PV for nothing on
condition he pressure washed the yellow lichen from his concrete tiled roof
first. The price quoted was £7,200. Can they be serious? The new installation
cost only £2,000 more.
Month’s generation : 184·91 kWh.
January
The sixth of the month marked completion of one year of generation. The meter reading was
3435·6, the data logger recorded only 3396·82. Generation for a complete year
is therefore 21·38% above prediction.
14th. Investigated pigeons congregating on roof (lower left). One section of
pigeon deterrent fallen off, adjacent one about to do the same. Pigeon access point
thereby provided. Microbee’s use of ‘No more nails’ as an adhesive is a bit of a
disaster. It sticks very well to the panels but not at all to the plastic base
of the deterrent spikes. Detached deterrents refixed with silicone mastic. Next
day see one pigeon trapped inside. Tough; it will have to suffer the
consequences of its own actions.
And then another section of pigeon deterrent fell off…
Month’s generation : 116·93 kWh.