Opportunistic PV Charging

 What should be known is for PV, it's critical to capture energy at the exact time interval that it is being produced most abundantly within any given day.

So it's widely known that solar and wind renewable energy is intermittent. While that presents a challenge, it can be overcome with engineering and process changes.

The main consideration is that on a perfectly sunny day, PV will generate it's highest amount of electricity between 10AM and 2PM. A brief 4 hour window can stand between you and a comfortable night of sleep. On an overcast day, this issue is particularly known.

Therefore it behooves all of us to generate as much electricity as possible between these hours. But there are several things that will keep your PV system incapacitated during these hours:

• Snow cover
• Inadequate wiring gauge (fire hazard)
• Inverter pulling more power than can be generated in the time window
• Batteries already at full capacity
• Break in the cloud cover comes earlier or later in the day (not between 10AM and 2PM)

If each of these things can be avoided or insulated against, it will be the difference of several kWhs on a 5 kW panel PV system.

Charging Batteries Outside

So there's plenty to say about adding more solar panels to my rooftop build. But summer really doesn't need a bunch of added solar panels since PV production is at it's highest. I will probably have more to say about how much solar and storage I have closer to winter.

This update is to say, while we still use lithium battery cells, we should probably be charging them outside. I've even heard that sodium ion cells also have a risk of shorting at the end of their cycle lifespan. So here's a picture of my outdoor enclosure I cobbled together. The batteries and inverter are in this same enclosure with electric lines coming in and going out: