So I woke up at about 7:30 and, excited, came down stairs to check how much we were generating, given that it was a nice sunny morning (although the sun rises at the back of the house, so the peak generation would be in the afternoon). I was disappointed to find the Sunny Beam monitor reading “0W” as being generated.
I took a few pictures of the house to get a feel for the light levels:
It certainly looked like there should be light enough to me, but I wondered it we’d just been over promised for a west-facing system (given that a south facing one is considered to be much better since it gets stronger lighting through most of the day).
I waited until 9am and it still wasn’t generating anything, despite even better light:
I checked the Sunny Boy inverter in the loft and it was still reading 140V like the evening before when the light had been much worse, so I suspected that there was actually a problem.
I waited until 10am, when the sun was starting to catch the corner of the top right panel and, as it still wasn’t generating anything, phoned the company that had fitted it. The guy that coordinates the solar part of the business (they also do windows and conservatories) wasn’t there, but I spoke to one of his colleagues. She advised she’d get the electrician to call me. The electrician called soon after and I explained the situation – he advised he’d call once he was done at the client he was at today.
He called at 2:40pm and arrived a little after 4pm. He resolved the problem and the system started generating at just after 5pm. It turned out that the fitters had connected some of the panels up incorrectly so that they weren’t attached to the system. Finally we were actually generating power.
Below is the graph of my first day:
The peak point just after the system started working was 1.4 Kilowatts. If it had been working all day, I’m sure I’d have seen some even higher values.
I had been hoping to be able to recommend the company that fitted the panels, but sadly between this and the lack of communication (such as about how the system was actually going to be laid out, verse what the sales guy had told us; when the scaffolding was going to be fitted; when the fitters and electrician would come; when we can expect to receive our certificate to register with our power company; etc), we really can’t recommend them, thus why their name will not be appearing in this blog.
Power generated today: 1.711KW