February 2014 Summary - Optimization of your Solar Panel System

February 2014 Summary:

What an interesting month February 2014 was.  The first week we were plagued with snow storms.  Only the 3rd had a moderate production of 45 kW hr. I was out of service during this time so no snow removal occurred.  The rest of the month was very good.  Overall we exceeded our expectations.  We benefited from the polar vortex.  Solar panels work great in cold temps.  Add that cold and clear normally means very little high level losses.  You can tell that by the output of your panels. Peak on 28 Feb 61 kW hr. Good day with intermittent clouds.

This is what I noticed during this month:

1.0 The sun's position during dawn significantly moved towards the east.

2.0 The sun's attitude during the month increased 9.1 degrees from 30.8 degrees

3.0  The day's sunshine increased by 1 hour and 11 min. (approx 10%).

4.0  After the 15th, on most average days we were getting 30-40 kW hrs.  On good days this was in the mid 50's.  It should have peaked above 60 but the clouds prevented that and no great days occurred (no clouds)

6.0  All of this helped the east west array to harvest daily equal to the south facing panels after around the 22nd of Feb.

7.0  When the snow melted, I installed safety chains on the array.  I still do not want to operate it in wind speed in excess of 20 mph. from the west.  A strong wind under neath your panels and you have a sail.

8.0  Overall solar harvesting exceeded 960 kW hrs for a 28 day month.

9.0  Initial start up fixes are scheduled for early March.

10.0  On bright cold days, windy days, the panels exceeded there design output by at times over 27 W.  This is because the cooling of the surface is ideal for solar production with no high level clouds
11.0 On two days I had to lower the array due to high winds.  Normally in mid position (horizontal), flat, the wind has no or little effect.  Safest position is hugging the roof.  You will notice that tracking arrays do the same thing in high winds.  We have the added benefit that roof hugging is good for one side at any time of the day and the other side can be flat reducing harvesting by about 20% only.  Don't play with the wind.  If you boat, you know what winds can do.  We don't lose as much as we think up until around 11 AM the west array will shade two panels.  This limits their production.  This is a seasonal problem and will disappear shortly as the sun start to rise more easterly.  Daily production results only show a very limited loss now.
12.0  We benefited from the polar vortex as at times it was very cold and clear maxing out our system at times

We expect to earn around $380 for February.  That is great for this time of year.  You must still remove any snow that fouls the panels to maximize the production.

Expectations for March:

If the weather holds, we expect to earn on average days 40-50 kW hrs.  Month's target is 1.4 MW hr.  I am optimistic. I expect peak days to be 60- 70 kW hrs with possibly low 70's near the end of the month.  The attitude of the sun will increase by 12 degrees during March and the daylight hours by 1 hour and 26 min.  The higher sun angle means near perfect radiance absorption and the longer day more harvesting.  This will peak on the 19th of May.  We are now entering the best time of the year for solar harvesting.  May is normally the best month when June should be.  That is what effects the warmer temperatures have on the system.  Also expect the sun to rise more easterly every day until 21 June.  All of this is sunshine dependent.

NOTES:

If you have a microfit contract that is DC limited, please refer to my blog and write to the Energy Review Board to complain that this limitation is in violation a the 10 kW microfit legislation. 

If you are interested in making some money, give Steve a call at Flexible Solar Solution.  He will give you a no BS analysis of your system.  Be ware of the others.  You can read all of my posts to educate yourself and be a better consumer.  Don't give any money until you get an offer to connect and then be careful.  Remember that you can claim back all of your HST spent to install your system.

We are very happy with our system and the income that it is producing.  We strongly believe that there should be no limitations on the DC side, only on the AC side. To us it is a no brainier, but you must be really careful.  I would love to post the BS that others told me but I am being kind not to.  Just call:

Steve -519 962 9218

What is the best solar panel system for Ontario's microfit program?

What is the best microfit solar panel system to use in 2014?

The post that I see on the net is way out of date (2011).  It is an orphan as you no longer can contact the poster.  

Let us first set some design criteria to look at the various system:  Solar harvesting involves installing a system that best meets our needs.  It is not just choosing solar panels but rather looking at the bigger picture that will occur over the projects 30 year life span.

1.0 Safety - you want the system to shut off when you turn it off. Fire fighters want this.

2.0 Maximum return on your investment.  You want this.

3.0 Maintainability - you want to be able to maintain the components as easily as possible.  If maintenance is or will be required, locate it in an easy to access location.  It does effect your ROI big time.

4.0 Long life components

5.0 Ability to monitor each panel's performance.  You want to know if something is wrong so that it can be fixed.

6.0  Individual component failure should not effect the entire system.  Aside from inverters, each panel should operate independently of the other panels.

7.0 Ability to handle shading issues.  Almost every one has some shading issues.

8.0 Design flexibility

9.0 Long life solar panels.  Solar panels with a tedlar or equivalent backing material. Try to use a high efficiency panel with good high temperature operation.  Polycrystalline panels tends to be lower cost but give a better ROI.  Mono panels seem to be over priced.  Make sure that the panel has a strong, stiff frame to support the glass.

Sun power makes one of the best solar panels out there.  If one cell is fouled, then you get the power from all of the other 59 cells.  To fully utilize this great feature, you need to also have optimizers installed.  Sun Power has linked up with Fronius which to my understanding do not yet have optimizers.  That is what I would call a not too bright act.  You will lose the benefit of the solar panel design.

Discussion:

There is currently only one system that meets all of these criteria.  That is a SolarEdge string inverter system with their optimizers.

1.0 Safety- Unlike other systems that maintain their 600 V bus voltage when shut off, Solar Edge maintains 1 Volt at each panel when shutdown/off.

2.0  Optimizers give you the maximum output for each panel and do not degrade the entire string's output when one or more panel is shaded giving maximum ROI.  This is a huge advantage.

3.0 All inverters will require maintenance or replacement after 10-12 years.  Locate inverters at side of house makes this a low cost situation verse under every panel.

4.0 SolarEdge Optimizers use ceramic capacitors verse electrolytic (shorter life -expect 10-12yrs for EC).

5.0 Built in panel monitoring system with optimizers

6.0 Optimizers isolate each panel

7.0 Optimizers handle shaded panels

8.0 You no longer have to have all panels on a string face in only one direction.  You can mix up directions, south and east on the same string.  This is a huge advantage for our installation.

Summary:

I am not going to review every string inverter out there.  You can read my earlier posts that warn you against using micro inverters because they can limit the panel's output and will fail with horrible maintainability under the panels.  At this time, I know of no other manufacturer who does this.  One major string inverter manufacturer opted to go micro inverters and later on add optimizers to their line up.  I believe that they chose the wrong path to go to.

Now use FlexibleSolar Solutions from Windsor Ontario to install your system and you are away.  Steve and Glen will help you to chose which solar panels you may want to install in your system, so give them a call.

Steve -519 962 9218

Optimization of your Microfit Solar Panel System.

Click to photos/graphs to enlarge viewing:

How to Optimize Your Microfit Solar Panel System

I have written all ready about the optimization features of our 10 kW microfit solar panel system installed by Flexible Solar of Windsor Ontario.  I believe that I highlighted 3 optimization features of our program.  Only one feature remained to be verified. We need to verify that the array will harvest more energy than straight South facing panels.  This will require looking at all results up to and including 21 June.  Initial results show that all is working as designed.

East-West Dynamic Tilting Array:

I designed a two dimensional array located on our East-West facing garage.  This consists of two -4 panel arrays each located on the East and West roof at the peak line.  The purpose was to have for example, the west facing array face east in the AM and the east face west in the PM.  Control is via a PLC and is automatic.

Here is a photo taken looking West to show both arrays in the AM.  Not a good solar day so far.

Here is the array looking from the West to East.  You can see the full extension of the West panels and the optimizers under neath the panels.

We even got some geese taking a look.  The alumimum plate is to stiffen the panel against vibration caused by wind loading.  Safety chains now installed and eliminate wind vibration. I still have yet to install the automatic shutdown when wind exceeds 20 mph.

Initially, during December and January, we were able to harvest about 80% of what a good South facing panel will do.  South facing panels being the best and the standard for comparison.

Here is the results from 19th February.  Total harvesting was 46 kW hours.  Not too bad for a day that was terrible in the AM with scattered clouds in the PM.  You will see two panels not producing well.  One is from a defective panel and the other from a defective optimizer.  These will be replace in a few weeks once we can again access the roof with out any snow or ice on it.

The array is shown as the vertical bunch of 8 panels.  The other is the south facing roof. Notice panel 2.0.20 was better than most south facing panels except  those which harvested 1.14 kW hours.  This is approximately two months from the winter solace on 21 December.  We have harvested approximately 1.4 MW hours and expect to harvest 16-18 MW hours.  That means we have harvested 8.75% of our annual harvesting.

The benefit of have a SolarEdge system with optimizers is evident from looking at the variation of output from each panel.  With a straight string inverter system, all of the south panels would be forced to produce the lowest value achieved by you worst panel.  In our case that would be horrible as one panel is only producing 70% of what it should be.  I bought two spare panels for this reason.  The problem with the optimizer just started I believe in February.  It is covered under warrenty.

In perspective, for approximately 4 months of the year you will produce less than south facing panels on sunny days.  On cloudy days, all panels produce equally.  That means for the peak harvesting months your gain will equal or exceed south facing panels when you harvest 82% of your energy.  Panels 1.0.18 and 20 show little loss from the shading from the array that occurs before 11 AM.

The proof of concept is still on going.  To me it only makes sense to use your panels as much as you can though out the day.

How much the array will harvest over and above normal south facing panels is left to be verified.  I can see before 10 AM that west/east at time harvest 50% more than south facing panels.  We still are no where near the optimum AM/PM angle for the panels to achieve their design output. 

To repeat, I designed the system to be optimized from March 21 to Sept 21.  By having some high functioning East/West facing panels you help to square up you harvesting curve or to maximize harvesting.  Basically, you want to have your inverter output to be as high as possible for as long as possible.

As a side note, it is fun to watch the solar gain increase, some times on a daily basis.  This is because the sun's attitude in the sky is increasing daily.  I can see for the past week that the daily peak is steadily increasing from the previous day's result as long as it is sunny around 1 PM.  I though that this would be much slower.  We suffer from a low roof pitch of 22.5 degrees which will disappear by 21 March though to September. For the month of February, the sun's attitude increases by 9 degrees in the sky.  From December 21 there is a 15.6 degree increase the the sun's attitude. By the end of March this will be 27.7 degree increase from December 21.  In addition, the hours of sunlight are getting much longer.  We even saw a robin at our bird feeders yesterday.

At the start of February, I was forecasting a minimum of 20 kW hrs per day with a maximum of 30kW hours for a cloudy day.  We have been fortunate that even with the two panel problems and some snow issues, we peaked at near 58 kW hours on one day and over the past 10 days only had one day below 31 kW hours.

Accordingly, for March we are now forecasting 30-40 kW hrs minimum with peaks about 60-70 kW hours of harvesting on sunny days.  We just might achieve 800 kW hours for February (28 days).  Possible March harvesting of 1 MW hour or more.

If you are thinking about going solar, then I give my highest recommendations to Flexible Solar Solutions serving Windsor and Southern Ontario.  They will tell you straight up if it is good idea or not.

 Just call:

Steve -519 962 9218

Ontario's Power Authority's microfit program - Acting in bad faith against the environment and the economy?

Ontario's Power Authority microfit Program

We started up a microfit program late in 2013.  As a home owner, we were limited to 10 kW on the DC side.  As an engineer, who worked in the old Ontario Hydro system, that makes absolutely NO sense to me to limit the DC side of a Photo Voltaic System with a 10 kW AC restriction in place already.  With 3% inverter loses, 2% line loses, 3% panel burn in during the first week and an overall 20% reduction in 20 years; you will start with a 9.2 kW microfit and end up with a 7.5 kW microfit in 20 years.  In addition, the panels themselves are over rated based on ideal dream conditions that seldom if ever occur.  With two 5 kW AC to DC inverters in place, you simply can't produce more than 10 kW AC period.  It didn't start out that way.  Some one changed it.  Who is acting (again) in bad faith?

IMPORTANT UPDATE: SEE JUNE 2015 POST ON KILLING OUR OCEANS NOW

Let me explain.

Green Energy Program:

This world is in Big sh## with the C02 levels currently around the 400 ppm mark.  For a healthier planet, a level of 350 ppm is the target.  Almost all home operated microfit, roof mounted systems use solar panels based on silicon wafer technology.  We must try to control CO2 emissions for the sake of the future populations and generate as much electricity possible from non-carbon based systems.  It has been my observations, that few people are interested in doing this.

As we must or want to have electricity to use, I am against closing our already built coal fired stations.  There is a large C02 foot print to build these systems and they should be used until it is no longer economical to do so.  China is building a large coal fired electrical system, so what is the point.  Perhaps, don't build any more but it makes good sense to use what we already have invested in to its maximum.  The exhaust gases could be cleaned up as is economically practical.  They don't have that many years left to run anyway.  You might then want to put in natural gas, wind and solar on these sites.

Benefits of Solar Panel Systems:

Of the green energy programs, solar energy is one, if not the best renewable energy sources available.

1.0  Solar energy from the the sun is free (input only).

2.0  Solar energy produces no harmful C02 gas emissions or waste products like nuclear energy.

3.0  Roof mounted solar panels do not take up any valuable agricultural land like wind and big power stations.

4.0  All most all home owners could install some solar panels

5.0  No birds have ever died from flying into solar panels, unlike large wind turbines

6.0  Solar panels blend into the natural roof of a house and extend the roof's life by keeping it cooler and shading it from UV radiation.  Thus they also help to keep your attic cooler and lowering your Air Conditioning requirements.

7.0  Solar panels produce energy during the peak energy periods of the day, thus helping the power company to meet the demand at the most expensive period to do so.

8.0  Solar panels systems have a long life span, of 25 to 50 years.

9.0  Existing power plants are reaching their life expectancy of the plants.  Building in capacity now makes good sense.
10.0  The economy:  If we have not DC limit, only the AC limit, the Ontario Manufacturers can make more panels and means more jobs in the industry period.

11.0  Generating  sites are among the power users.  No environmental approvals required.  Best location possible for generating sites.

Production Problems with Solar Panels:

When trying to harvest solar energy from the sun, there are many factors that work against you.  Here are some of them.

1.0  Sun light for only 30-40 % of the day.

2.0  Storing energy for use during non-solar periods. Very costly.

3.0  Any fouling of the panels from: bird droppings, over head tree shading, structure shading from other buildings, snow; ice fouling.

4.0  Reduced output during higher temperature days

5.0  Weather related, clouds passing by, over cast days, rain days, weather in general.

6.0  Pitch of your roof is not normally designed for maximum solar collection.

7.0  Very low solar harvesting for 6 months of the year as the days grow short and the sun dips low on the horizon. 

8.0  Interference from high clouds and dust, S04 particles from volcanoes - Reduces light concentration.

9.0  Smog

10.0 Morning frost in winter fouls panels during startup

11.0  Seasonal attitude and angle of light hitting the panels.  There is a large variance over the year.

12.0 House roof alignment not south facing

13.0 Neighbors trees shading roof.

14.0 Poor system design using straight string inverters

15.0 Poor panel design not producing power from good cells when others are fouled

16.0 Perfectly clear skies, cool temperatures where used to set the STC for the panel's rating.  These are seldom ever seen in the field and never after 1 month of operation due to panel burn in losses.
17.0  Wind speed above 20 mph cause tracking systems to shut down or lay flat.
18.0  Poor access in winter for any maintenance if required.
19.0  Replacement maintenance of DC/AC inverters after 12 years of use.

All of the above factors make it difficult to harvest solar energy.  Why has some one limited the home owners ability to produce the maximum energy that they could with the 10 kW AC programs.  We few must harvest as much as possible for those many who don't give a damn about the global warming problem.

The obvious design solution is to install more panels on the DC side to offset these conditions which the DC limitations prevent you from doing. 

The original contracts DID NOT have this stupid restriction and paid 85.5 cents per kW hour.  Jumping to the next level under the Fit program, it has a 500,000 kW restriction, so very few people would be limited on their DC side.  These are big businesses and institutions.

The home owner loses again. 

 Home owners are prevented from utilizing a standard in electrical generation called efficiency of scale or size.  Here you might say, size does matter.  There is also no rate adjustment over the 20 years.  The contract and restrictions is 100% one sided.

Compared with conventional electrical generating systems, solar panel systems have a horrible capacity factor rating well below 10%.  Normally you want your power plant to have a capacity factor above 80% and as high as you can get it.  Capacity factor is output over output 24x7x365

Now having lowed the tariff rate to 39.6 cents per kW hour, my bank reports no new applications to be used for microfit.  

Discussion:

The first question is why the 10 kW limit?  We should be able to feed back into the grid from a 200 Amp service over 30 kW of energy.  But let us leave that for now and stay with the 10 kW limit.

Solar energy production starts at first light and increase to a maximum output for the day in an inverse bell curve.  You may peak about 9 kW for less than 1 hour per day for most of the year.  It is impossible to reach and maintain 10 kW AC under these conditions, never mind maintaining it for several hours.  Your inverters will Always prevent you from exceeding 10 kW.  So why is the home owner being deliberately discriminated against?

Some one decided to not only limit this to 10 kW but to add an additional restriction of 10 kW on the DC side.  As a design engineer, if you asked me to design a system to produce 10 kW AC, I would install panels on the south, east and west facing sides of a house.  I would want the system to produce 80% of maximum after 2hrs..  In order to do so, I would most likely have to have 15 to 20 kW of panels on the DC side, if not more installed in the system.  I would also add future panels to adjust for the natural decay in output from these panels.  Of course, most people do not have large enough roofs for a perfect system and few have the proper roof orientation of a South facing roof.

My house feeds 4 other neighbors who are NOT harvesting solar energy (shame on them).  I believe that less than 1% of house holds in Ontario do this.  Therefore, those who do should be able to help to fill in the gap.  The few must help the many to reduce C02 levels.

It is not logical or beneficial to the planet to limit your production to 10 kW on the DC side.  On the AC side my two 5 kW inverters automatically limit my ability to produce at any anyone time no more than 10 kW AC so why impose this hardship.  We have already had to adsorb the very low tariff rate of 39.6 cents per kW hr.  The first people got 85 cents with no DC limit but had higher panel costs.

People have jumped on the solar panel band wagon and for the most part, tried to squeeze as much money from the home owner as possible.  Cost of building permits based on the number of panels (?),  engineering assessment for a relatively new building using trusses is not warranted.  A hugely ridiculous $1500 + HST connection fee from Hydro-One. Hydo-One's connection cost is the same that I paid for 1875 W of solar panels.  That is almost 20% of the cost of my solar panels!  Other utilities are charging around $200 mark.  The price of panels has fallen but the installation and fixed costs remain about the same. 

If you would like to try to change things, then write your concerns to the Ontario Energy Board.  The more suppliers and customers give their feedback, the better are the chances to change things.  By limiting the 10 kW microfit to 10 kW DC, the Ontario industry is hurt badly by decreased production of 20-50%.

Ask:  Why is the Ontario Power Authority microfit home owner being discriminated against by these policies and the larger Fit customers are not?  Our kW's directly feed other customers without any appreciable line loses.