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Cloudy days.

• Retric 8y ago
  Solar still provides power on Cloudy days, just less. Storage is still a poor solution to this problem it’s much cheaper to have excess renuables.
• pjc50 8y ago
  A far more serious consideration for solar is the changing seasons, especially at non-tropical latitudes. I graphed the output of my solar panels (56 north, Scotland) and it's really apparent: https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html https://flatline.org.uk/daystats.html
  • PhantomGremlin 8y ago
    So those panels are basically useless for 3 or 4 months of the year, i.e. November, December, January, February. Would there be much improvement if you could tweak the orientation to match the seasons? E.g. tilt them down toward the horizon during the winter? It's certainly a huge complication to have motorized panels that move all the time to track the sun. But maybe it wouldn't be that much of a hassle to go out there and manually reorient them (just in 1 axis) a few times a year?
    • pjc50 8y ago
      They're fixed to the roof, so making them movable would be a risk to their safety and wind resistance while being fairly difficult to access (and ladders are dangerous). For a fairly small benefit. It's not just the angle but the sunrise and sunset are a lot closer together.