Feb 5th, 2023

Author: donich_admin

Solar update

Days are getting a bit longer and commensurately our solar generation is improving. As of 5pm we’ve made more than 9kwh and it is still not quite finished for the day. Having said this, it was moderately sunny today as against yesterday when it was really really dreich and we made nearly nothing. This means that on a goodish day in early Feb we can make about 50% of our electricity needs – I expect this to pick up greatly over the next month.

Another thing to bear in mind is that 9kwh is actually around the full (i.e. 100%) daily energy consumption for an average UK household – we are much higher because we use electricity for cooking, heating/cooling our offices and powering large numbers of computers. At a push we could survive on 9kwh for lighting, devices and cooking (using the microwave and induction hob rather than the electric oven)

So very interesting – based on my figures so far:-

September – great
October – reasonable
November – worsening down to bad
December – bad
Jan – bad but picking up slightly towards the end of the month
Feb – looking ok on brightish days but still bad if it is overcast