[Greenbuilding] 10 kW solar power plant production

[RT]

I thought y'all might be interested in seeing some production figures  
[short version] that one of my neighbours sent along after our exchange on  
shearing llamas wandered off into the ozone.

He took advantage of our province's MicroFIT program

      http://microfit.powerauthority.on.ca/

to install a 10 kW capacity, ground-mounted solar array a couple of  
winter's ago .

His panels are attached to a 12 metre (40 ft) long horizontal pipe  
oriented with it's long axis running North-South, suspended about 3 metres  
(10 ft) off of the ground.

The pipe rotates to follow the arc of the sun over the course of the day.

This setup is interesting because it outproduces (by as much as 40% on a  
day-to-day basis in winter) an identical-sized, conventionally-oriented  
(ie rectangular array whose long dimension runs East-West) fixed array  
just a few kilometres away.

The Enphase site (in the link below) provides real-time output figures of  
the latter as well as daily, monthly, annual etc.

I had wanted to ask members of this List if they might have some  
suggestions for gizmos which would enable my neighbour to monitor the  
output from his array (and maybe feed it to a spreadsheet program which  
could ultimately plot it in nice multi-coloured graphs) from the comfort  
of his house on his laptop, but the notion slipped my geezer mind,  
repeatedly.


------- Forwarded message -------
From: [a neighbour]
To: [me]
Cc:
Subject: [not]Re:Llamas spitting
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:57:06 -0400

I compare with Enphase, which sells mini inverters.
This is their website with daily output figures.

http://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/VTTw3026

Today they did 65.2 Kwh, ours did 83.5, a difference of +28 %, a smaller
difference than most days as we had early morning clouds, which offsets the
early morning advantage I would normally get with the single axis.  I
notice that Enphase has produced 1.48 MWH so far this month. It sounds  
pretty neat
in megawatts. I don't know what our would be, but I can assume about 30 %
more.

Ironically we are benefitting from time of use rates as our axis returns to
start at 11 am, the lowest rate, so we pay even less of a miniscule charge.
[snip]

> And if you have a moment some time, I'd be interested in seeing some  
> more of your solar power plant's output figures.
>
> Last time, (winter) you mentioned that you were regularly getting up to  
> 40% more than the fixed array in Dunrobin.
>
> I'm curious as to how much difference there is during the longer days of  
> summer.
[snip]

================ end of forwarded material ==========


-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  C A >
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