Normal production drop?

[TAZ427]

Ok, I think this is normal, wasn't sure what was going on at first. Overcast day, but clouds didn't look to be too thick. I looked at a motion weather map of IR on weather.com, and the production drop seemed to be aligned to when the map when blue to light green over my area. Does that mean higher moisture and more radiation absorbed by the clouds, when it's blue/light green? Only on Day three of solar being on...

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[Mike90250]

I'd guess at the dropouts being clouds or glitches in the grid that drop the inverter off-line for a 5 minute recovery.

[discodanman45]

That is completely normal solar production graph of a slightly overcast day.

[bcroe]

It appears your production stayed above 50% even with the clouds. Must have been skimpy clouds,
because heavy ones can knock you below 10%. Bruce Roe

[SunEagle]

It could be clouds or some other issue that shuts down the inverter for a short time period although I would think the dips would go to Zero due to a complete shutdown. Maybe there is a fault log on the inverter explaining those dips.

[TAZ427]

It appears your production stayed above 50% even with the clouds. Must have been skimpy clouds,
because heavy ones can knock you below 10%. Bruce Roe

I think this is what it was. Looking at the weather maps in motion (time laps) of the visible spectrum, the clouds didn't look too thick during that time, and I asked my wife and she said no heavy clouds came over. Just when I did look at the IR weather map during the timeframe it had some lit up in blue and green. No Idea what the color coding is on it, but I assume it was more dense than the standard wispy nothing clouds we get during the summer. We average about < 1/2" rain per month in the Summer months.

It could be clouds or some other issue that shuts down the inverter for a short time period although I would think the dips would go to Zero due to a complete shutdown. Maybe there is a fault log on the inverter explaining those dips.

Temps were only about 80F, no rolling brownouts, no alerts/faults produced (that was the first thing I checked.) Looking at individual panel production, none of them appear to have dropped below 120W of production during those dips.

So, Ok, I'm chalking this up to my first - WTF, oh, just a bit of clouds... Moment.

[ButchDeal]

Looking at the weather maps in motion (time laps) of the visible spectrum, the clouds didn't look too thick during that time, and I asked my wife and she said no heavy clouds came over.
.

Thats funny. The human eye has built in compensation for low light so it is almost impossible to gauge the light intensity using the eye.
Further just a little bit of cloud is going to cut production, heavy cloud with zero production.

[Mike90250]

Wispy clouds can easily cut production 50% I think that is what you are seeing. Watch the meters on a weekend while you are relaxing, and see how the array responds with light clouds. Anything less then full on sun, gives a pretty dramatic decrease in production. That's why we laugh at folks with roof top arrays on their RV, that say it's oversized and they can park in shade.
My 5Kw array gives 500w in moderate clouds, 200w in heavy clouds.

[Kingram]

I used to like cloudy days and rain since we don't get that much here is Arizona but since I got Solar I don't like them anymore lol Rain and clouds are only allowed to come after sunset now. We had some light high clouds yesterday and I had about 7 kWh less then I should of had.

[BackwoodsEE]

My 5Kw array gives 500w in moderate clouds, 200w in heavy clouds.

Same as you with heavy clouds, Mike, although here in Eastern WA we often get a light overcast that still produces anywhere from 20% to 50% of full-sun power. When it's at 50%, the sky is a sort of bluish white and the shadows are just a bit less defined.

On a partly cloudy day, I will often still get 10% when the sun goes behind a cloud.

At the other extreme, there was a really dark day this spring where it seemed about to rain anytime and my 6 kW array was producing in the double-digit watts.

I'm looking forward to getting my second array in this summer, which will only be tilted 5 degrees from straight up. I want to fill in the dips in production somewhat without having to upsize any of my other equipment. Each of my two charge controllers will limit output current at 60A each, even with 19A available from each pair of paralleled strings at 350V MPPT.

[ImInPhxAZ]

Yep that's exactly what a brief pass of clouds looks like. Id only be concerned if they got to 0. Not frequent here but had a light cloud passing on the 5th. Probably the same that stole kingrams 7kwh!

[TAZ427]

Wispy clouds can easily cut production 50% I think that is what you are seeing. Watch the meters on a weekend while you are relaxing, and see how the array responds with light clouds. Anything less then full on sun, gives a pretty dramatic decrease in production. That's why we laugh at folks with roof top arrays on their RV, that say it's oversized and they can park in shade.
My 5Kw array gives 500w in moderate clouds, 200w in heavy clouds.

Hitting one of those days right now. Interesting watching the impact.

[bcroe]

Move to northern IL to learn fast about clouds. However, my arrays have been upgraded to
make the best of them. Bruce Roe

[dailo]

Occasionally I see a drop like that on my solaredge monitoring graph, but if I look at PVoutput I can see it measured 0 for that window. I thought maybe it was a reporting issue, but looking at the data from my meter (Rainforest) it shows consumption for that period. There are no errors reported in the solaredge portal, but I am guessing Solaredge support probably has access to the error codes. Not sure what causes the inverter to stop working for about 5 minutes occasionally. Messes up the graph!

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[bcroe]

Occasionally I see a drop like that on my solaredge monitoring graph, but if I look at PVoutput I can see it measured 0 for that window.

If it went to zero for 5 minutes, check if it is tripping out on high AC line voltage, automatic recovery. The
inverter will push line voltage higher, esp at the curve peak. Bruce Roe