Mercracing
New Member
Hello,
Hoping to gain a better understanding of how a solar array will perform in cold vs hot weather. My system was installed at the first of this year and consists of a Sol-ark 15K with 8200 watts of Sunpower panels (20- 410 watt panels, aimed south, and set at 30* I believe) installed on a ground mount. The panels are in an area with zero shading and have been cleaned once since install (we live on gravel and there are fields under plow near the array) (really didn't make a difference). What I am trying to understand is the difference I am seeing in production from cooler weather to what we have today. On May 1 and May 2 of this year the temps were in the 40's up to about 60 degrees and today has been from 70*-90*. With the hotter weather the system is down a 1000-1100 watts once the day starts to warm up versus a month ago. I know there are other issues like sun angle, but I don't know they all "work" and or what is a normal behavior. On the two days I mentioned in May we generated a little bit over 61 kwh each day. Now the system struggles to generate over 55 kwh a day (even with the longer days). Is this normal? I have asked the company that installed the system and Sunpower these questions was was (at least I felt) brushed off with the "yeah, heat hurts panel production". Thank you in advance for any advice.
Hoping to gain a better understanding of how a solar array will perform in cold vs hot weather. My system was installed at the first of this year and consists of a Sol-ark 15K with 8200 watts of Sunpower panels (20- 410 watt panels, aimed south, and set at 30* I believe) installed on a ground mount. The panels are in an area with zero shading and have been cleaned once since install (we live on gravel and there are fields under plow near the array) (really didn't make a difference). What I am trying to understand is the difference I am seeing in production from cooler weather to what we have today. On May 1 and May 2 of this year the temps were in the 40's up to about 60 degrees and today has been from 70*-90*. With the hotter weather the system is down a 1000-1100 watts once the day starts to warm up versus a month ago. I know there are other issues like sun angle, but I don't know they all "work" and or what is a normal behavior. On the two days I mentioned in May we generated a little bit over 61 kwh each day. Now the system struggles to generate over 55 kwh a day (even with the longer days). Is this normal? I have asked the company that installed the system and Sunpower these questions was was (at least I felt) brushed off with the "yeah, heat hurts panel production". Thank you in advance for any advice.