Category: solar panels

6202 emocleW

Fireworks in the far distance, played backwards as 2025 disappears into history.
Our weather station malfunctioned at various points in the year, with the base unit failing in June and the business end packing in in December; consequently none of the statistics are reliable. However the solar panels soldiered bravely on and served up 1,530.932kWh, making 2025 our second best year ever.
A1 is rereading Bad Actors by Mick Herron.

Watts Going On

On the 300th day of the year, we’ve managed to reach 1,500.000kWh precisely in our solar panel output for this year. So giving an average of exactly 5.000kWh per day.
This year was looking like it would be our best ever for the panels, but that was probably scuppered by the very gloomy October. It’ll probably be only second best.

A2 is reading The Rose Field by Philip Pullman, which finished off the trilogy beautifully. Like with the knee replacement, she has been waiting for this for 6 years, with covid to blame in both cases.

Feeding Time

Today’s family dinner was spag bol with stuffed mushrooms for the kids and trifle for pudding, after which we scored a miserable 8 on the GSQ. Can’t win them all.
But we did win on the solar panels, which passed last year’s total with four months left to go. August itself was averagely sunny and warm, but very dry (and nearly half of the total came down yesterday — 10.5mm out of 22.5). Only 2022 had less August rainfall, and 2025 is looking like it will be our driest ever year by some way, even allowing for the weather station’s downtime in May/June.

A Record, of Sorts

Earliest dates for reaching 1000kWh
Rank Date Total Year total/rank
1 11 Jul 2025 1001.506 ?
2 16 Jul 2020 1009.582 1513.188/3
3 16 Jul 2015 1005.793 1528.472/2
4 17 Jul 2022 1000.305 1537.314/1
5 18 Jul 2021 1001.289 1484.297/4
6 19 Jul 2018 1007.096 1483.659/5
7 24 Jul 2023 1007.385 1465.268/7
8 25 Jul 2019 1004.350 1467.265/6
9 27 Jul 2014 1002.906 1440.038/8
10 29 Jul 2013 1000.932 1419.952/9
11 3 Aug 2017 1003.167 1403.480/10
12 8 Aug 2012 1004.008 1369.068/11
13 10 Aug 2016 1000.968 1366.583/12
14 10 Aug 2024 1000.675 1321.768/13

A fine and sunny day, and the warmest of the year (32.6°C).

The solar panels made 12.33kWh, which takes us past 1000kWh for the year. This is the earliest date we’ve reached this milestone, as seen in the table, and puts us on target for a very good year.

Critter of the Day: Unidentified Small Hoverfly

Dilly-dallying on the dill.
The weather station was out of action for the cold wet start of the month, so according to our records June 2025 was the second driest and second warmest June of all time, with the temperature reaching 31.9°C yesterday. It was the fourth sunniest June ever according to the solar panels.
A1 is reading The Red Shore by William Shaw (thanks A2!). A2 is reading Guilt by Jussi Adler-Olsen.

Fog

We woke up to thick fog but it cleared to give us our sunniest day of the year so far: 2.6kWh. Sadly it was still the gloomiest February, and the second coldest, in our records, though only averagely rainy.
A1 is rereading All Fun and Games until Somebody Loses an Eye by Christopher Brookmyre (who gives a credit to the book designer for fitting it all on the cover). A2 is reading A Wake of Crows* by Kate Evans. Not many crime novels are set in sunny Scarborough, aka the bleak North Yorkshire coast, as the cover copy describes it.

The Snows Are Melted, the Snows Are Gone

Ou sont les neiges d’antan? Well they have gone for at least a while and for the first time in ten days we have action on the solar panels and people are moving about outside.
A1 is rereading Black Widow by Chris Brookmyre. A2 is rereading The Mind’s Eye by Hakan Nesser.

Setting Sun

It’s been a miserable cold rainy month so far but our income from the solar panels over their lifetime has now reached £10,000 and look at this apocalyptic cloudscape. A1 is reading The Silver Collar* by Antonia Hodgson, an excellent historical novel mainly set in 18th century London, concerning the ramifications of the slave trade, the treatment of mental illness and the power of class. The antagonist is a bit over-the-top evil, but the two protagonists are well-drawn and sympathetic,  and the writing is sharp and witty. This is the fourth of four in the series (so far), and it would have helped to read the earlier volumes.
A2 is rereading Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff.

Owl and Squirrel

Our scare owl totally fails to bother the stupid squirrel, even though a real owl would eat it in a flash. The pigeons all studiously look the other way though.
June 2023 was a bit warmer and drier than June 2022 and, despite the dim and cloudy end to the month, the solar panels managed to absorb enough photons to pull ahead of June 2018 by half a kilowatt hour and become our sunniest June of all time. [Update 3/7/23: It was also the hottest June on record for the whole country.]
Admin1 is rereading River of Gods by Ian McDonald. Admin2 is reading The Last Remains by Elly Griffiths.

Pop-up Poppies

Since the replacement of our back garden hedging with a fence, a number of these plants have shot up in the disturbed soil. They appear to be Papaver somniferum, otherwise known as opium poppies.
Today was our second ever sunniest day for the solar panels (13.430kWh), and the recent run of good weather means it’s on the 7-day sequence records.
Admin2 is reading Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon.

Sun…

Seen through the morning fog and a few filters: the Sun with a massive sunspot, 5 times the size of the Earth.

…Light

And here is The Light (shopping/hotel/cinema complex which banned Admin2 from taking photos in case there were celebrities hanging out there, coz we all know celebs hate being photographed) lit up by a low sun yesterday when our solar panels hit 0.92kWh, best since last November.
Admin1 is reading The Kingdoms and Admin2 is reading The Lost Future of Pepperharrow in our ongoing Natasha Pulley fest.

Andromeda Galaxy

This picture is a tiny detail from an unzoomed shot taken with Admin1’s new phone — a Pixel 6a — from the light-polluted suburban environment of our garden. The inset in the green circle is a screen grab from Stellarium, a wonderful sky simulation program available for Linux and Windows. It shows that the faintly elongated blur at centre-left is, indeed, the Andromeda Galaxy; all the surrounding stars are correct. Our galaxy will collide with Andromeda soon. (OK, in about 5 billion years; no worries.)
It’s amazing that a small phone can capture  something like this.
Today 2022 became our best year ever on the solar panels, and Admin1 is reading The Blood Divide by AA Dhand.

Catch the Sun

Last month was our sunniest August ever: 239.610kWh. It was the only August to appear on the high score table for the best months ever and featured 6 of the all-time best-ever days. On average it was 5 degrees warmer than last August by day but only .5 degrees warmer by night.
Admin1 is rereading Troubled Blood by Robert Galbraith. Admin2 is reading Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale; a fictionalised early life and wartime years of the poet Charles Causley.

An Unusual Occurrence

Tyrannosaurus Rex appears to have laid an egg from which a small human is hatching.
Meanwhile the sunshine on a cool and windy day gave us our best August solar panel output ever: 12.25kWh.
Admin1 is rereading Deadland by William Shaw. Admin2 is reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy; a community of transgender hijras in Delhi intersects with the everlasting conflict in Kashmir.

When the Nights Are Blue

Happy birthday twins!
To celebrate, some low-down noctilucent clouds, the first of the year, and 13.397kWh on the solar panels, our third sunniest day ever, by 2 watts, what what!
Admin1 is reading Tragedy on the Branch Line by Edward Marston, which was a considerably cosier train ride than Bullet Train, soon to be a big film. Admin2 is reading Crow Court* by Andy Charman, another crowdfunded debut, not so interesting.