Solar Stats for April

Reading time: 2 minutes (255 words)
Author: @pugmiester
Tags: solar , energy , battery , stats

System specs

16 x 390W panels (6.24kWp) facing almost due south with some shading
GivEnergy 5kW Hybrid Inverter
GivEnergy 9.5kWh battery
System Location - Manchester, UK


Generation for the month of April

Solar generation and usage chart

Over 550kWh for the month, that’s over half a megawatt hour, in April, in Manchester. Yeah, I’m happy with that.

We still have work to do to make better use of what we’re generating as we still exported a big chunk on the days when Eddie (our EV) is not at home plus we imported a fair amount too, although that was all overnight on the lower cost GO tariff and 90% (roughly) was to charge Eddie with the remaining 10% for home battery topup that we could have done without on probably most days.

I still have issues getting the Solcast solar forecast to play nicely with the inverter to make smart decisions about how much to charge the battery based on tomorrow’s forecast. It still seems to be intent on charging to 100% overnight regardless of what settings I juggle. I’m missing something really obvious I’m sure of it.

Daily solar generation for April

Solar generation and usage chart

Monday the 3rd was our highest generation day clocking in at just over 40kWh. Our lowest generation day was just 2 days later where we generated just 3kWh. A massive difference for just a couple of days apart. You’ve got to love the UK weather.

A friend once said he loved the UK “because you can see all four season is a day”. He’s not wrong :-)