[Nico13 (Ken)]

When it’s partly cloudy as opposed to a clear blue sky?
To be more specific, I have a 2KW Solar system installed five months back that has consistently produced about 1500W on the instantaneous readout at any one time and the only time I ever saw it go anywhere near the 2000W was the first day it was installed and turned on.
That was up until the recent season change and the sun climbing a little higher in the sky, my Panels are on my shed roof and only at 12deg pitch facing pretty much due North so the lower output through winter could be fully understood.
Now my inverter is located in my shed just above my work bench so I can see what’s happening as I work and at the same time notice the sunny and shaded patches as the clouds drift by.
Now here’s the interesting part, when it’s a clear blue sky not a sign of cloud but at worst a tiny amount of atmospheric haze the panels float along at around the 1500W output.
But when there is broken lower level cloud you know the nice fluffy stuff you tend to see in spring that comes and goes and you can watch it evaporate under the warm sun well then the panels will pump out anything up to the 2000W (equaling the system size) and even a bit over for an instant I saw at one stage and that’s when the sun is shining through that light evaporating cloud.
I know the panels have a diffused glass to help optimise the suns rays but for some reason the additional scattering caused by the light cloud enhances this by what would seem to be at times up to a 25% increase in performance.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could capture that scattering pattern caused by the clouds and design that into your glass on the panels. A big improvement on efficiency could be had.
Anyone got a light ray scatter pattern capturing machine.
Maybe I should be puting a patent on this