A friend has those water panels on her roof and has told me it saves a lot
of money on bills for heating water. I guess its lower tech though and lets
face it many like the idea of gadgetry!

Brian

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"Martin Brown" wrote in message
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On 30/04/2019 08:37, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 30/04/2019 08:15, wrote:
How realistic are the manufacturers claims for energy produced by their
solar pv panels. If they claim 2kw howlikel is this to be true/realistic
?

realistic at midday in June.

It is better than you might think in winter direct sunlight since to some
extend the cold makes the panel a bit more efficient.

You can also push solar panels a bit harder at the risk of cooking them by
adding a couple of mirrors either side. Some fold out portable battery
chargers work that way.

Average about 20W

Pessimist! The usual figure for the UK is about 900kWhr per 1kW peak of PV
panel which in ballpark terms is about 100W average (taking a year as
9000hr). The further north you go the worse it gets.

Even so I am inclined to think that solar is a bit of a waste of time in
the UK since it isn't really sunny enough to be worthwhile. At lower much
sunnier latitudes where peak solar power generation coincides with peak
aircon demand then having an extra layer on the roof providing shade and
solar PV power serves a useful purpose.

A lot of UK solar generated electricity is immediately dumped into the
homes immersion heater because of FIT market distortions. You get paid for
half of what you generate irrespective of what you do with it!

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Regards,
Martin Brown