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Coming Soon to NJ - 12.35 kW Hanwha DUO-G5 + SolarEdge Inverter/Optimizers by GPE

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  • J.P.M.
    replied
    Originally posted by jordgubbe View Post
    Right, sorry, I meant pvoutput, not PVwatts. Your confusion was understandable and well deserved, haha. Thanks for the detailed explanation anyway!
    As long as correct information is the result, all's well. What I wrote may be of some use to others.

    Leave a comment:


  • jordgubbe
    replied
    Right, sorry, I meant pvoutput, not PVwatts. Your confusion was understandable and well deserved, haha. Thanks for the detailed explanation anyway!

    Leave a comment:


  • ButchDeal
    replied
    Originally posted by J.P.M. View Post

    Well, I guess I was a bit confused as well and ignorant of how an inverter can backfill production to PVWatts. You sure you're PVWatts reference is correct ?

    I assumed (probably incorrectly ?) that you were somehow putting or getting inverter output to a spreadsheet and somehow comparing that output to some PVWatts' output. If so, a common error for that type of operation happens when the necessary D.S.T. adjustment is not done and the hourly timestep is off by one hour when D.S.T. is in effect, making any hourly comparisons of system output to PVWatts modeled hourly output, which are already meaningless with respect to system performance, more meaningless yet.

    Take it FWIW. Perhaps others reading this thread may find it useful with respect to the D.S.T. adjustment.
    I think he meant pvoutput.org not pvwatts.

    Leave a comment:


  • J.P.M.
    replied
    Originally posted by jordgubbe View Post

    I'm not sure I understand. In my case, the reporting outage was an entire production day, where both solaredge and PVwatts reported nothing to the point that PVwatts triggered the "no production for x hours" alert I set up. Good to know that works, incidentally. After I got home from work that day, I reset the inverter. When it came back up the blue light was back and the day's missong production appeared on PVwatts at some point overnight
    Well, I guess I was a bit confused as well and ignorant of how an inverter can backfill production to PVWatts. You sure you're PVWatts reference is correct ?

    I assumed (probably incorrectly ?) that you were somehow putting or getting inverter output to a spreadsheet and somehow comparing that output to some PVWatts' output. If so, a common error for that type of operation happens when the necessary D.S.T. adjustment is not done and the hourly timestep is off by one hour when D.S.T. is in effect, making any hourly comparisons of system output to PVWatts modeled hourly output, which are already meaningless with respect to system performance, more meaningless yet.

    Take it FWIW. Perhaps others reading this thread may find it useful with respect to the D.S.T. adjustment.
    Last edited by J.P.M.; 10-28-2019, 12:06 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • NJturtlePower
    replied
    Originally posted by J.P.M. View Post

    While you may have some burn in losses, even with a lot of instrumentation, it's not possible to spot any long trends over 2 months.

    Most output spikes/transients occur at non clear times when clouds are present. Most spikes in output occur on partly cloudy days. Also, that 11.4 kW might just be where system clipping occurs.

    For daylong production totals, besides probably having more P.O.A. irradiance on the array Sept. 19 vs. Oct. 5 due to solar geometry that gives longer days as well as more favorable solar incidence angles, there's also the effects separate effects of possibly/likely having a less clear atmosphere on 10/5.
    Also, the array may well have been operating at a cooler temp. on the Sept. day due to the weather, including amb. air temp. and wind effects that make for lower array temps which will increase system efficiency.
    Also, unless you've cleaned the array between the two dates, array performance was probably impaired by maybe a couple of % due to fouling incurred from 09/19 to 10/05.

    Without some instrumentation (including a pyranometer), record keeping and a bit of calculation, unless there's something like a quantum change in output, it's not possible to get anything more than anecdotal information about array performance, especially over a short time interval such as 2 months.

    You may have some system anomalies and some startup/assembly issues that may be causing problems with system output, but until you become more aware of all the inputs that affect system output, I'd look elsewhere for causes of output variation before I called the vendor.
    Interesting and detailed response for sure, but way more involved than needed. Appreciate your time and effort though!

    I wasn't trying to identify any real patterns or imply there was any issues with my system...just replying to sunpowereddev, a local and nearly as recent GPE install about some random recent data. I realize there is no real weather trends in only 58-days of data. I'm happy it's working as designed, the sun is up and shining again today and the credits are being banked, all is good in the solar world!

    Leave a comment:


  • macaddict
    replied
    This is what I used to calculate my anniversary month: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Nt...if1wJD1WFeOz44

    Leave a comment:


  • J.P.M.
    replied
    Originally posted by NJturtlePower View Post

    As far as production, I've seen a more gradual drop in my less than 2-month run, but it's interesting when sometimes you get a high spike on a day that you would assume was lower.

    On 10/18 my system hit its peak of 11.4 kW on an otherwise lower production day of 29.7 kWh. My high daily production in October was 56.7 kWh on 10/5 down from my Sept. high of 63.2 kWh on 9/19.
    While you may have some burn in losses, even with a lot of instrumentation, it's not possible to spot any long trends over 2 months.

    Most output spikes/transients occur at non clear times when clouds are present. Most spikes in output occur on partly cloudy days. Also, that 11.4 kW might just be where system clipping occurs.

    For daylong production totals, besides probably having more P.O.A. irradiance on the array Sept. 19 vs. Oct. 5 due to solar geometry that gives longer days as well as more favorable solar incidence angles, there's also the effects separate effects of possibly/likely having a less clear atmosphere on 10/5.
    Also, the array may well have been operating at a cooler temp. on the Sept. day due to the weather, including amb. air temp. and wind effects that make for lower array temps which will increase system efficiency.
    Also, unless you've cleaned the array between the two dates, array performance was probably impaired by maybe a couple of % due to fouling incurred from 09/19 to 10/05.

    Without some instrumentation (including a pyranometer), record keeping and a bit of calculation, unless there's something like a quantum change in output, it's not possible to get anything more than anecdotal information about array performance, especially over a short time interval such as 2 months.

    You may have some system anomalies and some startup/assembly issues that may be causing problems with system output, but until you become more aware of all the inputs that affect system output, I'd look elsewhere for causes of output variation before I called the vendor.

    Leave a comment:


  • NJturtlePower
    replied
    Originally posted by sunpoweredev View Post

    Lately on and off the SolarEdge app and the web interface have been very slow to connect. SE is probably having some issues on their end.

    Just barely over a month into Fall and production has been steadily dropping. Peak power rarely reach 9kw on my system now, and on those couple of rare cloudless days it generated 46kWh, quite a substantial drop from 76kWh I've seen back in August. I wonder what production looks like in the winter..

    Haven't checked in in a while. Have you decided on when to have the anniversary reset with JCP&L? Most everyone including GPE say March is ideal and I'll likely go with it, but wanted to monitor it for a few months and see how it goes. As of yesterday, per the JCP&L meter, I have ~480kWh banked.

    BTW, a member posted that an owner's version of SetApp is coming. I will try to find info on it whenever I remember to.
    https://www.solarpaneltalk.com/forum...725#post405725
    I've noticed the slow login to the SE portal as well....

    As far as production, I've seen a more gradual drop in my less than 2-month run, but it's interesting when sometimes you get a high spike on a day that you would assume was lower.

    On 10/18 my system hit its peak of 11.4 kW on an otherwise lower production day of 29.7 kWh. My high daily production in October was 56.7 kWh on 10/5 down from my Sept. high of 63.2 kWh on 9/19.

    I just had my follow-up meeting with Matt from GPE last Monday, and he explained the whole solar year anniversary deal...I'll likely go with their recommendation of Feb/March as well, but have a few months still to put in the request. It also won't matter much for this first partial year anyways since we got a late start on banking.

    In better news my system just made it's second SREC in just under fall two months! I'm actually still waiting on my final registration letter from the state, but i'll likely get into the habit of selling them quarterly and reporting production about monthly. Looks like you'll hit #4 in the next day or two

    Leave a comment:


  • NJturtlePower
    replied
    Originally posted by jordgubbe View Post
    Was the blue light on? That happened to me once, where the connection to the monitoring platform errored somehow. After power cycling the inverter, it was fine and back filled my production to PVwatts and the monitoring platform.
    Blue light was not on...but just to follow up, even when it did start reporting again later in the day it was hours delayed and intermittent. FYI I'm on hard line Ethernet, not cellular so my reporting so far has always been rock solid.

    Must have been some SE server issues going on because like I said it wasn't just me as I searched PVoutput. I checked 4 or 5 systems (including yours) I am following and every one that had a SolarEdge inverter was lagging in data. Example when my data started coming back in about 11am it only filled in data until about 8:30-8:45, later in the day I checked again and was behind a n hour or two as well but by the end of the day everything was there and reported.

    I did also cycle the inverter off/on early in the morning along with my router and this did not correct the issue further pointing to a SE issue.

    Leave a comment:


  • sunpoweredev
    replied
    Originally posted by NJturtlePower View Post
    So this is a first for me..... suns up, no errors or red light on inverter, but no reporting to SolarEdge portal since 6:15am now almost 3 hours later.

    Checked a few followed systems on PVoutput and not seeing any of there data for today ether... SolarEdge outage? Seems to be a thing with a quick Google search....

    UPDATE: Back now as well as everyone else...random 4-hour outage I guess.
    Lately on and off the SolarEdge app and the web interface have been very slow to connect. SE is probably having some issues on their end.

    Just barely over a month into Fall and production has been steadily dropping. Peak power rarely reach 9kw on my system now, and on those couple of rare cloudless days it generated 46kWh, quite a substantial drop from 76kWh I've seen back in August. I wonder what production looks like in the winter..

    Haven't checked in in a while. Have you decided on when to have the anniversary reset with JCP&L? Most everyone including GPE say March is ideal and I'll likely go with it, but wanted to monitor it for a few months and see how it goes. As of yesterday, per the JCP&L meter, I have ~480kWh banked.

    BTW, a member posted that an owner's version of SetApp is coming. I will try to find info on it whenever I remember to.
    https://www.solarpaneltalk.com/forum...725#post405725

    Leave a comment:


  • jordgubbe
    replied
    Originally posted by J.P.M. View Post

    No offense meant here, and just a note, but you do know that unless adjusted, PVWatts data is all on standard time, right ?

    If you already account for D.S.T., forget I brought it up.
    I'm not sure I understand. In my case, the reporting outage was an entire production day, where both solaredge and PVwatts reported nothing to the point that PVwatts triggered the "no production for x hours" alert I set up. Good to know that works, incidentally. After I got home from work that day, I reset the inverter. When it came back up the blue light was back and the day's missong production appeared on PVwatts at some point overnight

    Leave a comment:


  • J.P.M.
    replied
    Originally posted by jordgubbe View Post
    After power cycling the inverter, it was fine and back filled my production to PVwatts and the monitoring platform.
    No offense meant here, and just a note, but you do know that unless adjusted, PVWatts data is all on standard time, right ?

    If you already account for D.S.T., forget I brought it up.
    Last edited by J.P.M.; 10-26-2019, 11:00 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • jordgubbe
    replied
    Was the blue light on? That happened to me once, where the connection to the monitoring platform errored somehow. After power cycling the inverter, it was fine and back filled my production to PVwatts and the monitoring platform.

    Leave a comment:


  • NJturtlePower
    replied
    So this is a first for me..... suns up, no errors or red light on inverter, but no reporting to SolarEdge portal since 6:15am now almost 3 hours later.

    Checked a few followed systems on PVoutput and not seeing any of there data for today ether... SolarEdge outage? Seems to be a thing with a quick Google search....

    UPDATE: Back now as well as everyone else...random 4-hour outage I guess.
    Last edited by NJturtlePower; 10-26-2019, 10:48 AM.

    Leave a comment:


  • Ampster
    replied
    Yep, that would be called marketing. Sometimes it is even disguised as public relations. I expect we are influenced by it even when we least suspect.
    We wouldn't have this Forum without the Solar Panel calculator, lead generator in disguise.In finance I always reminded myself to test my assumptions when preparing projections or recomendations. One of the most important assumption to test is whether the data source is somehow skewed by marketing.
    Last edited by Ampster; 09-17-2019, 10:02 PM.

    Leave a comment:

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