How low can you get?

bjohnson

It's 12 noon and I'm getting 22W from a 4kW system. And it's pouring down with rain of course.

The_Green_Hornet

I find that I get 0W at 12 midnight each and every day.

Kernel_Sanders

You can get 0W at 12.00 noon too, bj. If the cloud is dark enough your system will close down completely. This has happened before very close to my optimum (2pm), but it more usually occurs late afternoon.(3.92 kWp SSW)

jimjames

The snow last year had the same effect.

Once in the last 12 months have I seen a 0W reading during the day once the system has started in the morning and that was a winter day with very heavy cloud.

Martyn1981

I've had a zero on a sunny day!

Only happened once so far, about October last year, the sun was in the west, and I only had the ESE systems. The sky was perfectly clear blue, no white at all, so very surprised to see both ESE systems shut down.

The sky was so clear that it just wasn't reflecting enough back down on the other side of the house. The inverters were clicking, flashing, ticking and whirring, I think they restarted and switched off about 3 times.

With the sun in the same place, but medium white clouds, they could have been generating about 400W to 800W.

Mart.

Kernel_Sanders

jimjames wrote: »

Once in the last 12 months have I seen a 0W reading during the day once the system has started in the morning and that was a winter day with very heavy cloud.

Even a full system like mine has shut down and then restarted several times just in the 7 months that I have had it. I expect you just haven't been around to notice, or maybe your monitor doesn't function well at very low readings. If you had the inverter in a bedroom like me, I'm sure you would notice more shutdowns.