Monthly Power Generation

I converted to solar power during the last week of October, but I'm not showing in this blog the power generation from my solar cells during that week.

November started out sunny but quickly deteriorated into a month of clouds and overcast, especially the latter part of the month.

December started out fairly good for generation of solar power for a winter month, but the days are shorter and the sun is lower in the sky. In addition, during the last two weeks, snow covered the solar cells, and daytime temperatures below freezing prevented the snow from melting. The result was almost no power was generated in the latter part of the month. If fact, the power output of the cells was so low, the firmware running in my WiFi thought the cells had malfunctioned. However, a bit more solar power was generated the next day, and the cells looked OK to the firmware.

January was a mixture of clear, sunny days and cloudy, stormy days. The days are getting longer, and the sun is rising higher in the sky resulting in more generation of solar power.

February was abnormally warm and sunny. A relatively large amount of solar power was generated, and I used space heaters to use some of the excess power before Rocky Mountain Power (RMP) (in March) zeroed the credit given for excess power.

March was sunny and relatively warm most of the days. In addition, the days are longer, and the sun is higher in the sky. This is reflected in the increase in solar power generated during the month.

April was a mixture of sunny, cloudless skies, and overcast skies with predictions of rain showers. Even with the clouds, a lot of solar power was generated.

May was a mixture of sunny days and rainy days. There were three days in May that had over 50 Kwh  of solar energy (very good), but there quite a few days that had only 20-35 Kwh. One day had a lot of rain but only 7.9 Kwh of solar energy. Because we're in a drought, we need the water, so I'm not complaining about the rain. The total solar energy generated was slightly less than it was in March, but because of the warmer days, I'm not using space heaters, and the energy drawn from the grid may be less than it was in March. This means that the excess solar energy for May may be greater than it was in March. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out that way.

June was a good month for solar power. Lots of sun and not many days with clouds. All of the days except 1 day was above 30 Kwh, and that 1 day was 28 Kwh. Unfortunately, my A/C was on a lot, and we had temperatures in the triple digits for a number of days. As soon as my bill from RMP is calculated, I'll know if the increase in solar power was greater than the use of grid power due to the A/C.

July had a lot of sun but a lot of clouds mixed in with the sun. It was a cooler month than June.

August had days of reasonable solar generation of power, but the days are shorter.

September had shorter and cloudy days. The nights are now longer than the days.

October saw shorter days and days of sun and days of rain and clouds.

November saw a bit less power generated than a year ago. We had a mixture of sunshine and clouds, with a bit of snow.

December was a month of snow and cold with little or no solar power generated. First week of December was OK, though

January was another month of snow and cold, but there were days of sunshine that allowed some power to be generated. We didn't use our electric space heater much this month.

The first few days of February were cold and snowy. Snow on my roof prevented solar power from being generated. The middle of the month had its ups and downs, and the last week of  February was 10 degrees (F) above normal, and lots of solar power was generated. However, the solar power generated during the month was less than a year ago.

                   Energy
Month          Generated (Kwh)

November  2014       605
December  2014       416
January   2015       568
February  2015       858
March     2015      1190
April     2015      1250
May       2015      1130 
June      2015      1410
July      2015      1360 
August    2015      1240
September 2015      1100
October   2015       870
November  2015       554
December  2015       277
January   2016       367
February  2016       654

Note: I've had my solar system installed for over one year, and I have a good idea how it behaves. Thus, I am no longer updating this page.