Some reflections on the 2012 solar power yield

I know I’ve been neglecting this blog of late, but you can always find me at my personal blog as well as at the Pegasus Pulp blog. And if you’re interested in our e-book business, you can now also purchase Cora’s e-books at Kobo and its affiliates around the world.

As for the solar power generated by the photovoltaic solar cell array on our roof, most years the solar power curve looks either like a steep mountain (extremely high peak yield and sharp drop off) or like a gently sloping hill (the results for the highest yielding months are fairly close together). At any rate, the annual solar power curve always has only a single peak. Mostly this peak occurs in June, since that’s when the days are the longest. But in the six years that we’ve had the solar cell array, we’ve also had peaks in July and May. This year, however, the solar power curve for the year has two peaks in May (2305 kWh) and July (2291 kWh) respectively and a dent in the middle caused by an extremely rainy June, which yielded only 2081 kWh.

However, over the year the solar power generated usually remains fairly steady, because a good month usually makes up for a bad one (though 2011 was bad right across the board). 2012 is no exception, because overall it looks like an average year so far.