Solar Photovoltaics

At the beginning of last week CJ Solar, an Ipswich company, installed 32 photovoltaic cells on our roof, each with a microinverter so its individual production can be monitored. The company was optimistic that the amount of power we would produce should be good. At 285w each panel, the array should easily produce its maximum of 9.12Kw on a sunny day because the roof is south-facing and at an almost ideal angle. So far, our highest production has been 6.14Kw.

The EnPhase microinverter system enables us to monitor our production on-line, so....

....with today mainly sunny, we have so far produced over 20Kwh with a peak of over 6Kw. Since all the electricity produced is, effectively, free to us, we've installed a hot water controller which means that, as soon as the PV array starts to function in the morning, the electricity is used to heat the hot water cylinder using the immersion heater. This morning the cylinder was hot within a couple of hours so, since then, we've used the washing machine twice and had a Dimplex heater on in the study.

Since Tuesday a week ago we've produced a total of 135Kwh. We should receive two payments for this, one a Feed in Tariff based on the number of units we produce, the other an export payment based on the size of the array. In theory, we should pay for the system within ten years but this will depend, in part, on how successfully we exploit the power we produce.