So it was an actual predictably dry day today, which is awesome because it means I got to go visit my lovely solar farm in good weather! I also met someone local there and gave them a quick tour, which was cool. Its a LONG day, starting when we leave my house at 8AM, and getting home about 7.30PM, with the majority of it being driving (in an EV obviously :)). We also stopped off briefly for coffee and cake at a nice English Heritage house we had never been to before, which made the day a bit more varied.
I especially like this picture:
You cannot see the whole farm without a drone, but that gives you a rough idea. One very cool thing in this photo is the grass. Its really low, because until very recently it was full of sheep! I’ve blogged about how this is a win-win before. The sheep were very present today, but not actually in the field this time, which means less treacherous walking for us. It was also a super sunny day. I also spotted this:
I am not even sure what is going on there, I shall enquire, but this is just one panel out of 3,024 that is…discoloured? Its almost like a manufacturing error where a coating got missed, or something weird has happened. Certainly not something I have ever noticed before. Unlike a home setup with optimisers, we do not have panel-level data, because 3,024 optimisers plus cabling really adds up, and new panels are only like £80 anyway (and we have some spares). For all I know this panel is fine, or maybe its a total dud, we just do not know, but worth keeping an eye on.
It was quite pleasing to spot this:
Its not massively visible in a photo but this is basically a line of tiny trees / hedge that was required as part of our planning permission. This was apparently super justified to shield the horrors of our renewable energy project from the vast mass of people living in housing on that hill who might otherwise have their lives ruined by seeing it.
That was a joke. There are no houses, try zooming in. Yes its ludicrous, yes they made it a requirement anyway, yes it cost money, yes that eventually ends up on your energy bills. Angry yet? Anyway, I am trying not to rant too much as I love my solar farm and its really good to go see it. The thing I was worried about, and actually didn’t need to was the cleanliness of the panels. They are yet to be cleaned and they look PERFECT. So the self-cleaning nature of British rain really does work in this location. Excellent. I am now sure even bi-annual cleaning is not required. Even if its every 3 years, that’s not too bad. The profitability of the site is very low, so any cost that crops up each year really hurts it. Its not a financially-motivated project, but I would prefer not to LOSE money!
Also I should point out that the stats on the solis (inverter manufacturer) website now show my site as having been the equivalent of planting 1,000 trees and has saved 1,820 tons of CO2. In other terms that avoided 782 tons of coal being burned. Pretty cool. All of this will seem even cooler when the current BROKEN inverter gets replaced (Not impressed by solis TBH), and we are at 100% capacity and not stuck at 90%. Grrrr,