<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Gordon:
Arnold,

If you clean your array, I'm going to have to clean mine! I was down to 19.33 kWh yesterday, the high air temp was 90 degrees F. You've got a little bit larger array and cooler weather, I'm worried.

Gordon<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Well I didn't clean it but Mother Nature is doing its best today.

The larger array is offset by being east facing.

I haven't even come close to 20 in recent days. 19.94 kWh still stands as my high water.

arnold

Henry, Arnold, et al,

We did it. Our system produced 20.02 kWh on April 16th. Perfect clear, cool day. I forwarded the file to Henry. My best ever with old St2500 was 18.8 kWh.

Gordon

Congratulations.

We haven't had any clear days recently. Maybe Saturday I can get 20kWh day.

I did have an impressive partly cloudy day performance of over 19kWh. The graph showed some nice spikes in the morning and afternoon, probably from edge of cloud effects.

arnold

I had two inverters do over 20 Kwh on Saturday.

arnold

[ April 22, 2003: Message edited by: Arnold de Leon ]

So, you have set the world record for the most ST units producing over 20 kWh each! What was your all-time best totals for the old ST units (pre XR Beta)?

I don't have pre XR data. I didn't have the old units for very long and I didn't have any reasonable instrumentation (I didn't have fishbowl yet). Remember the pre XR systems were pretty awful with their on board LCD display.

Interestingly enough it wasn't a "perfect" day. There were some cloud passes.

Here are the numbers for the 3 inverters:

20.315 kWh
20.478 kWh
18.419 kWh

arnold

A very interesting improvement in the XR Upgrade is how the MPPT harvests energy on patchy cloudy days. The existance of patchy coulds only seems to reduce my energy production by a few percent! The XR now does such a good job of harvesting cloud edge reflections that the total effect of clouds is often reduced to nearly nothing -- I'm getting more energy production of patchy cloudy days than I used to get on clear, cool perfect days with the orginal ST25000.

Gordon

Yes, it is really apparent when the inverters aren't at full power output. The dips are often surrounded by spikes.

arnold

Hi,

Now that several of you have been running FishBowl on the upgraded inverters with large arrays for a while, is there any better idea on what the largest array size to use on a Sun Tie GP 2500 without maxing out the inverter on cloud enhancement too much?

Thanks,

Ron

Ron,

I been thinking about this very issue. My Inverter power limits on all cloud enhancements, except in early mornings or late afternoons (meaning times when the output would otherwise be, say 1200 to 1700 watts AC) with my 3600 watt array. I have been thinking about running some tests with one circuit disconnected (3000 watts) to see what happens -- of course it is hard to power down!

Gordon