Want to Maximise Your Summer Solar Power Gains This Year?

April/May time of year is an interesting one for maintenance.

The weather in Scotland is a little less defined than it used to be, but as we move into summer it is still fair to say that generation from wind and hydro starts to drop off, and generation from solar is really ramping up. So it's a good time to consider how your system is operating.

Solar power panels need to be clean to maximise solar gains in sunny weather.

For hydro, this is when we often tend to find Clients thinking about carrying out any intrusive maintenance; for example, pigging of their pipelines.

But this is also when turbines that have been running almost constantly begin to start and stop frequently, as river levels drop in drier periods and then pick up after rainfall, and we see little niggles becoming apparent.

For reliable solar power, checking on panel cleanliness is really important. These next 4-5 months are going to be the biggest producers and so making sure the panels are at their best is important.

The manky stuff from autumn that has sat up on the roof unnoticed over winter because of lower generation periods now starts to affect that peak generation.

For ground mounted arrays, dust, or if you are near the sea, salt can be an issue.

Ideally this would have been dealt with in March, but if not get out the special brush (the one you only keep for the solar panels) and a bucket of warm soapy water and give them a clean. If you need help – if the panels are on a roof and you cannot reach them – give us a call and we'll see what we can do.

Remember too that whilst solar appears to be a relatively benign bit of kit, no whirring spinning parts or big lumps of metal, it is still an item of plant and should be regularly serviced and checked.

We may think these things are trivial, but losses in efficiency can be costly. By way of example, the loss of 0.1 bar on a hydro with a 10 bar head is the loss of 1%, usually evident at higher flows. If full power running makes up 50% of your yearly generation, then that's the equivalent of 0.5% of your output.

On a 50kW hydro producing 250,000kWhr that's 12500kWhr, or at 35p FIT & Export, that's £437.50 worth of generation. It's not only Dave Brailsford that should be considering the laws of 1%... Given that many hydro schemes with a peaty catchment can lose between 0.1 and 0.5 bar equivalent per year, that's a bit meatier at £2,200 a year. When did you last pig your pipeline?

Back up generators may have had to earn their keep over the winter period: check their running hours and give us a call if you are coming up on service time. For those of you with regular run hours offgrid, Amanda is in touch monthly to see how you are getting on. Help us to help you by making sure the generator starts next time you need it.

And finally a fun fact!

A medium head turbine spins at 1,000 rpm (revolutions per minute).

That means it turns 60,000 times every hour.

That's 1,440,000 times every day, or 525,600,000 every year (if it runs every day). Let's be kind and suggest it only runs 80% of the time, that's still 420,480,000 revolutions every year.

And if it was 8 years old, how big would that number be?

Think of that when you are considering how well your turbine is behaving, whether it be hydro, or wind, which is probably about 40% of these figures.

How well would even the best make of car or van handle that much pressure!