Monthly Solar Production - Show us yours

Pho3nix said:
Funny enough my new system is performing well for April.. well except for the cloudy week we had in JHB

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I mean it performed far better than my old one, but in comparison to other months :)
 
FlashSA said:
I thought I'd share the first month's stats for the new office install. Unfortunately the 4 public holidays where we were closed meant production is at least 20% lower than it should be but not a bad first month. We had an export gremlin which has now been fixed by the installer (he had to move grid to the Gen port on both inverters to stop night time export spikes from battery to grid - very weird and apparently caused by dirty grid power causing the Deye's to compensate?!)



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Geez that’s a beeg system
 
For the guys with many panels, how many panels would be needed to generate 35+kwh on a sunny Gauteng day?
All north facing or a split? How much worse is west facing?
 
NR7 said:
For the guys with many panels, how many panels would be needed to generate 35+kwh on a sunny Gauteng day?
All north facing or a split? How much worse is west facing?
Click to expand...
All of them. :ROFL:

I donno man, I just added another 6 x 590w panels to my existing 16 x 420w panels. And changed batteries. Will take me a while to see some solid, constant performance stats with winter starting and all that.
 
NR7 said:
For the guys with many panels, how many panels would be needed to generate 35+kwh on a sunny Gauteng day?
All north facing or a split? How much worse is west facing?
Click to expand...

Based on my system at the coast:

Summer: 10-12 550w
Winter: 16 of them
 
NR7 said:
For the guys with many panels, how many panels would be needed to generate 35+kwh on a sunny Gauteng day?
All north facing or a split? How much worse is west facing?
Click to expand...

You can work on roughly 5 x panel kilowatts for winter and 5.5 for summer.

Here is an example of my 5.7kw all north facing panels hitting 31.6kwh for the day.

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NR7 said:
For the guys with many panels, how many panels would be needed to generate 35+kwh on a sunny Gauteng day?
All north facing or a split? How much worse is west facing?
Click to expand...
probably like 12+ panels
best bet is to face 1/2 NW and other 1/2 NE if not then all north
west will only generate towards the late afternoon evening as long as not on the same string it will help make the boob bigger :) as when the curve starts to droop in the evening a west face will keep production up until a bit later
 
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NR7 said:
For the guys with many panels, how many panels would be needed to generate 35+kwh on a sunny Gauteng day?
All north facing or a split? How much worse is west facing?
Click to expand...
I've got 7.28kWp of panels (16x 455W) facing North-Northwest in Joburg. Assuming I have enough load for a day I've maxed it out at about 38-40KWh for a day.

I usually get better generation on average in winter than summer (cooler and less cloudy but less sunlight hours) but roughly the same max generation on any particular day.
 
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NR7 said:
For the guys with many panels, how many panels would be needed to generate 35+kwh on a sunny Gauteng day?
All north facing or a split? How much worse is west facing?
Click to expand...

Hi. My system was installed in the beginning of 2020. North facing , flat roof (concrete slab) about 20° tilt. Roodepoort area. Was operating with 5.04kWp (18 X 280W amerisolar panels). My average production per day was 25-29kWh for both summer and winter. Production was and still is load dependent (house loads and battery recharging).

In January this year I bought an EV and decided to expand the system. Added more storage and more panels. Went from 8.5kWh usable storage to 22.7kWh (80% DOD), and from 5.04kWp to 10.3kWp (added 10 x 585W amerisolar panels but we reached the max voltage for the inverter MPPT so only connected 9 panels. Running 2 5.8kVA inverters in parallel. Master inverter has the new panels connected 9S1P, slave inverter has the old panels 9S2P.

Production since the storage and PV expansion has now been steadily between 30-33kWh for the house loads and battery recharging. The days I charge the EV it goes up between 40-44kWh depending on how long I charge the EV and at what current (20A-32A or 3-6kW, depending on house loads and PV production on the day).

I am solar clipping on most days and considering crypto mining during the day. Still need to research.

Below see screenshots. You can see where extra battery storage was added, followed by extra PV
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First kind of decent production day since I installed the new batteries and extra panels.
36.6kWh production and zero from Eskom.

Batteries set to go down to 30% SOC.

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W@P said:
First kind of decent production day since I installed the new batteries and extra panels.
36.6kWh production and zero from Eskom.

Batteries set to go down to 30% SOC.

View attachment 1907335
Click to expand...

On my system I went through the settings and found that my charge current was a limiting factor for how much I could put into my batteries.

That reduced my actual production compared to the predicted and basically wasted PV. The setting was fine for the previous number of batteries and panels but subpar for the additional PV and batteries.

Just check that your recommended charge current for the batteries, your cables from inverter to battery bank, the DC breaker fuse rating and the settings on the inverter are all optimised and within spec.

In my case I went from 80A charge current of previous setting to 120A.
 
Not quite monthly, but this is my (custom) Node-Red dashboard.

The white needle is the critical load, the orange needle is non-critical (which drops in case of loadshedding). The inverter can provide power 4kW — 5kVA (the orange section on the outer ring), depending on the nature of the load (resistive or not), above which the inverter blends in power from the grid.

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One of my worst months and the darkest winter months are still ahead.

A combo of a lot of rainy and overcast days in the Cape and the neighbors trees getting taller and blocking more of the little sunlight available.

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Last few days been ok, but bad month overall.

My inverter also some sort of glitch so I am having switch the solar db 1 and 2 each day otherwise the inverter limits it self to 480v total and not 480v per mppt. Only released other day then voltages seems always be 359 and 120v lol

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First full month with the new batteries and extra panels. Installation was done on the last day or so of April.

10.2kWp and 24kWh batteries set to run down to 30% SOC overnight.
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VS

April 2026
6.7kWp and 10kWh batteries set to run down to 30% SOC overnight.
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