Newbie Question - north east of England - generation question

loser123 · Feb 14, 2012

hello everyone

i recently had a new 4 KW pv system fitted in the past fews days
and have generated 10kwh in the past 4 days so am averaging 2kwh a day is this normal for location and time of year

anyone know if 'canadian solar' panels are good? was told by the fitters they are the bee knees!

my exact location is middlesbrough system is mostly facing south

thanks in advance

whinmoor · Feb 14, 2012

It's better to analyse performance over a longer period to smooth out variances in weather. Presumably it's not been amazingly sunny in your area recently? Did your installer not give you a month-by-month breakdown of predicted production? I'd expect a system like yours to produce about 170kWh during Feb which averages out at something like 5-6 per day.

loser123 · Feb 14, 2012

yeah it has been overcast and the sun has barely been out in the last few days

i was just trying to find out what other people were generating in my area so i dont feel alone

whinmoor · Feb 14, 2012

Take a look at PV Output to compare with people in your region:

PVOutput

vernam616 · Feb 14, 2012

Where abouts in Middlesbrough mate and what company installed?

FB. · Feb 14, 2012

I regard Canadian Solar as being above average panels.

Your outputs will vary enormously depending on the amount of direct sunlight on the panels (sunlight is not nearly as useful if it's round the wrong side of the house, or if it's shining on the panels from off to the side).
On a cloudy day at this time of year, a 4kWp system may well only generate a handful of kWh (say 2-4kWh). If your panels are lucky enough to catch a whole day's sun, you could well be in the high-teens kWh (say 15-19kWh). SouthEast or SouthWest generate about three-quarters that amount and East or West generate about half that of a South-facing array.
Once springtime arrives, the East, West, SouthEast and SouthWest will noticeably catch up with the South-facing arrays. The reason being, of course, that the sun rises in the SouthEast in winter (so it rises off to the side of East-facing arrays, or directly in front of SouthEast-facing and quickly moves out of their arc). In spring the sun will rise in the East, so the SouthEast systems will be close to the performance of South systems. By summer the sun rises in the NorthEast, so even the East-facing panels can gather lots of sun.

SRE · Feb 14, 2012

We're in the North West, weather has been rubbish in the last few days we struggled to 2.5kwh this afternoon, have averaged 3.6kwh a day since the start of Feb with rubbish Sharp panels. January averaged 1.8 worst month since installation in Nov 2010. All of our customers doing much better because we recommend Bisol, REC or Sanyo panels.