I created a few new charts this year to evaluate the performance of my solar panels in 2016. Overall they did about as well as expected, though production was a bit lower than last year. I guess I shouldn't have skipped a year of cleaning!
Read MoreYear In Review 2015 - Power of the Sun
Readers of my posts will know that I collect quite a bit of data about my solar panels. Once a year I like to take a look at the bigger picture and see how the system is performing over time. First some quick numbers: Overall system efficiency averaged just over 13.1% in 2015, slightly up from 12.5% in 2014. The panels themselves were also a bit more efficient, up to 14.4% from 13.7%. This is a little surprising since they're expected to drop 0.5% per year.
Read MoreEnergy Use in 2014
Recently I was thinking that it would be interesting to take a look at the amount of energy I use (and generate) to see how it varies over time. I already had daily data for my electrical and gas use, but thought that it would be interesting to see if this correlated to the weather. Luckily I found a weather station near my house that had a treasure trove of data, including solar radiation numbers. It took me awhile to pull all the data together, but I was able to come up with an interesting set of charts. I'm also trying something new in this post by embedding the charts directly, which should make them interactive. Let me know how it works for you!
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