Effect of Fires/Smoke on Solar Panel Efficiency?

[ZeApelido]

Curious what the relationship is between, say PM 2.5 concentration and solar panel efficiency? I'm assuming all the smoke in California recently affects solar panel effectiveness somewhat. What metric is most important?

 

[Need]

I am up wind from the fire, so it has no effect on our solar. But even with just a few clouds here and there, the solar drops quite a bit. Here are 2 Sundays in November. One has some clouds, the other completely clear sky (because of the wind).

 

[nwdiver]

This is from a system in Chico...

 

[ZeApelido]

Thanks. Half production ain't bad for what probably was quite the amount of smoke in the air.

 

[mblakele]

This is from a system in the SF Bay Area

 

[rays427]

Our production during the winter actually goes up with thin clouds. In the last several days we have been in and out of smoke and the two days with the most smoke we had the highest production. Today was a smoky day (with thin clouds) and our production was 13.7 kwh. I have no Idea how much was due to the clouds and how much was due to the smoke. The day with only heavy smoke our production was 10.7 kwh. There were two relatively clear days between the two smoky days and the production was 8.7 and 7.8 kwh. Before the fire our production was also in the range of 7.4 to 9 kwh.

 

[Ampster]

My production is off by about 10% and I am not getting the clipping that I was getting when the skies were blue. I couldn't as easily see the effect of high clouds since my system was designed to clip on clear days. The faster ramp up from the inverter getting to optimum efficiency is harder to see than the imaginary clipped top of the sine wave.