Impressive PV Solar Generation Despite Wettest April for 100 Years

April 2012 has been officially recorded as the wettest for over 100 years with rain virtually every day. Our weather station shows a huge 137mm of rain fell during the month compared to 20mm in March 2012. Despite this huge variation we actually generated more electricity from our PV solar panels than in March and were still above the SAP target. March generation was 310 kWh and April had the impressive result of 320kWh despite the rain so we can only imagine how good generation numbers would be with sunny weather.

The April figure of 320 kWh compares to a SAP 2009 estimate of 294kWh and PV-GIS of 330 kWh so is very close to the target. During the month we had some new records for solar electricity generation set with the highest 5 minute average electricity generation at 3.012kW as a result of the intermittent cloud cooling the panels. An output of 3.012kW from 3.01kWp PV solar panels must be about the maximum possible. I guess this was above the rated kWp figures as they are measured at 25C and this month the temperature has been nearer the 10C range. Lower temperatures improve solar power generation as can be seen by the peak generation just after clouds cool the solar panels.