Loving the great sunny weather this month in the west

[slcasner]

Today is day 1 of full monitored production and of course, it is cloudy and wet most of the day.

Still, we have so far managed 23.1 kW from our 7.4 kW system. It will get better without clouds and as the sun gets above the trees in our valley.

@Vines, you're missing an h!

 

[t3slaMS]

i'm doin' real good thanks to this:

View attachment 772983

that's what's left of a 50ft cedar tree that used to shade the panels from oct-march every year. tree company can't come till early march to grind it up.

20kwh vs 16kwh the year before on the day after the tree fell.

View attachment 772986

@astrorob - do you use your own scripts for this graph?

 

[astrorob]

@astrorob - do you use your own scripts for this graph?

sort of, it is pvoutput.org, but i have scripts running against my inverter, powerwalls and EAGLE to upload the data there.

 

[astrorob]

Your graph looks like ours! And for the same reason, but an Oak instead of a Pine.

Not that we would want to, but the city will not let us cut down heritage trees (those that you cannot wrap your arms around the trunk.). And it would take 3-4 people holding hands to go around the Oak.

yeah i often thought about cutting down the tree but i didn't want to do it just for the solar. it does capture some amount of carbon after all. 'topping' the tree would have worked but then it would look completely goofy. mother nature took care of it for me but it cost $$$ to remove the tree and some more for the stump. this is definitely going to help with load-shifting during the winter months.

 

[wwu123]

sort of, it is pvoutput.org, but i have scripts running against my inverter, powerwalls and EAGLE to upload the data there.

Why not send EAGLE straight to pvoutput.org (either pulling directly or via Wattvision)? Is it because the your other two devices are not supported directly, so you need to do other calculations with it to get the right consumption/generation values?

 

[jboy210]

yeah i often thought about cutting down the tree but i didn't want to do it just for the solar. it does capture some amount of carbon after all. 'topping' the tree would have worked but then it would look completely goofy. mother nature took care of it for me but it cost $$$ to remove the tree and some more for the stump. this is definitely going to help with load-shifting during the winter months.

Did the atmospheric river storms (hard to even imagine rain like now) cause issues with the tree?

Pines are kind of a nuisance tree for us. We have a row on our western fenceline and they do somewhat shield the view of the neighbor's house. But they have grown very tall in the 40 years since they were planted. And now cut off the sun in the Western sky an hour or 2 earlier than the hills do. And drop crap in our gutters. I would love to top the pines, but I understand that just makes them get weird and bushy. I may have to have a talk with the city Arborist and see what she can authorize us to do.

 

[roblab]

would rather have rain right now than high solar production

But, only because we HAVE solar and DON'T HAVE rain. I use my solar to run my deep well pump, so my yard, at least, doesn't suffer. I'm surrounded with deep-rooted trees, which have grown used to slight rain in the fall and winter (like one or two days) and then nothing until November. But here in Northern California, this is the normal cycle, so if one wants rain now, they need to move to the southeast where the humidity about kills you when you go outside.

 

[h2ofun]

But, only because we HAVE solar and DON'T HAVE rain. I use my solar to run my deep well pump, so my yard, at least, doesn't suffer. I'm surrounded with deep-rooted trees, which have grown used to slight rain in the fall and winter (like one or two days) and then nothing until November. But here in Northern California, this is the normal cycle, so if one wants rain now, they need to move to the southeast where the humidity about kills you when you go outside.

Extended has some rain in later part of March. We are far from over the rain period

 

[holeydonut]

Extended has some rain in later part of March. We are far from over the rain period

I just washed and double-waxed the Model 3. I expect it to rain tomorrow.

 

[jboy210]

I just washed and double-waxed the Model 3. I expect it to rain tomorrow.

I guess we should all get our cars washed as extra assurance of rain.

 

[astrorob]

Why not send EAGLE straight to pvoutput.org (either pulling directly or via Wattvision)? Is it because the your other two devices are not supported directly, so you need to do other calculations with it to get the right consumption/generation values?

I do directly use it. however, PVOutput doesn't really understand storage (the powerwall stuff is reported to the "extended data" page which is only advisory), and so all the dollar amounts it computes are as though all consumption was supplied from the grid rather than sometimes from the grid and sometimes from the powerwall. thus i had to make a fake system which looks at the EAGLE, but reports any power being exported as fake solar production, and any power being imported as PVO expects to see from an EAGLE. this way i have a system that calculates what i am paying/being paid by PGE with the storage active. i can then at least manually compare what i would have paid with solar only to what i actually pay PGE. seems like these days the powerwall is getting me about $3 per day, which is better than i expected and might erase the +$1000 yearly increase that EV2's 4-9pm peak rates represent (vs EV1).

Did the atmospheric river storms (hard to even imagine rain like now) cause issues with the tree?

Pines are kind of a nuisance tree for us. We have a row on our western fenceline and they do somewhat shield the view of the neighbor's house. But they have grown very tall in the 40 years since they were planted. And now cut off the sun in the Western sky an hour or 2 earlier than the hills do. And drop crap in our gutters. I would love to top the pines, but I understand that just makes them get weird and bushy. I may have to have a talk with the city Arborist and see what she can authorize us to do.

i think it probably did. it might not be visible in the picture, but about a foot underground there is an extremely hard layer of chert. the tree roots extended beneath this layer and i assume that layer did a lot of work in resisting torques on the tree. it is possible the huge quantity of rain we had really softened up the soils above and below the chert and allowed it to fail. the tree always had a slight tilt away from the house and we asked an arborist about that when we moved into the house. his opinion was that cedar trees don't put up a lot of 'sail' and so it would be unusual for the tree to keel over. but those were some mighty ferocious winds, maybe 70mph gusts.

are the pines over the diameter limit? ours was a lot lower in diameter than the oak tree that went down 11 years ago in a similar windstorm. i think you might have been able to get your arms around the pine tree when it fell.

 

[jboy210]

...
are the pines over the diameter limit? ours was a lot lower in diameter than the oak tree that went down 11 years ago in a similar windstorm. i think you might have been able to get your arms around the pine tree when it fell.

Good point. I will go measure. They do look rather skinny when I look out the window.