May Solar Generation Falls Short: Disappointing Solar Panel performance in May

We are now half way through the month and so far the electricity generated by our solar panels has been disappointing with the poor weather to blame. At the current rate May will be the first month when solar electricity generated has fallen well below target.

May solar panel performance lags behind target

Our record peak electricity generated remains the 1st April when you would actually expect the lengthening days to 22 June to break records consistently. The failure to reach new peaks shows the lack of clear sunny days and the number of rainy days since the hosepipe ban was introduced. Although the sun has shone at different times over the last 6 weeks we have not had a single day when the sun has been out all day with clear blue skies.

UK Solar PV Panel Performance - Daily Output per kWp

Our PV solar panels have now been installed for almost a week now and over that time the performance has varied considerably as has the weather. On an overcast day we still generated some electricity but it scraped in just under 1kWh.

PV Solar panel performance, daily outputs in Kent UK

Today has been the best performance so far. Despite an initial rainy start, the day quickly cleared to bright sunshine and the panels started generating from 07:40 this morning at 36W, giving a total output for the day of 8.176kWh. For a day in late November this seems to be a very good performance. So far the output recorded on the generation meter has totalled 32.67kWh in just 6 days, ranging from a low of 0.98kWh to todays 8.176kWh.

The maximum peak output at any one point during the day has been 2kW. Again this was achieved today, the highest previous output from our solar panels was 1.5kW which was reached on a number of days this week.

In the 6 days so far we have earnt the grand total of £14 in FIT payments - not a bad start for one of the worst performing months of the year for solar!

It is my intention to publish each month the performance of our solar panels, 3.01kWp from 14 Sungrid 215W panels with SMA Sunny Boy 3000HF inverter to give an indication of what can be achieved as an output from solar panels in Kent UK. Any comparisons with other panels in the UK would be useful, two friends also have now installed solar panels in the local area so I will endeavour to provide figures to compare the different setups and output performance achieved.