Ways of Displaying Solar data

24 July: I have been asked to explain more about Display methods - if you have made the investment in a PV roof, you want to take pride in the productivity of your system - making it a bit of a hobby at the same time.
   The minimum you would always have is the standard OfGem meter that sits discreetly next to your circuit breaker panel usually.  That is free. You can take daily readings, as I do off mine. It's valuable to check this once a day anyway to make sure that something hasn't tripped a circuit breaker.
    You can ask your installer for the handheld option which is a portable unit linked by wireless or have a small wall mounted display in the house somewhere.  For this, some will charge, others will include it.
     Handheld units are usually equipped with a USB connection and memory, so you can download to a computer regularly, eg monthly.
     For public systems, eg the Attenborough Nature Reserve visitor centre, it is important to have a prominent wall mounted display to show visitors how the system is performing.

In my case, I opted for the more expensive option of a webrouter, which is a small box that is connected to the inverter at one end and has an ethernet cable to my existing broadband modem. Being connected all the time, it can send an update every 15 mins to a datalogger in Germany that then rebroadcasts the results from my and 32,000 other systems..
http://www.sunnyportal.com/
Then click to view 'publicly available systems', then enter Peveril into the search field.
To see others, select your country and size of installation for some 'Renewables Surfing'

http://tinyurl.com/peveril-solar-roof
is a demonstration of mine. Using more of this site, i can see every day for the last ten years or more....
the set up also includes a small weather station giving surface and air temperatures, and irradiation . also sending to the same place.

Weather Comment and Form filling

17 June : Weather: April had about 40% more sunshine than we might have expected from the computer prediction, and May about 25% more - if the real output of my Photovoltaic roof is anything to judge by. June started badly with some days that reminded me of February, but has now caught up nicely with a sequence of sunny days, and the colder air temperatures giving us good solar capture. We have had a couple of 'Best of the Year' days where combinations of good sun and north wind (cold air) have produced over 25 kWhrs in a single day - on the 4th and 16th June.

Form Filling
If anybody reading this now has solar PV panels installed, don't forget to register as a Microgenerator. There are forms to fill out and send off, but don't be put off by this - you are, after all, signing up to receive quite a substantial amount of money from the electric utilities for the next 25 yrs, so a little bit of checking is required. You are likely to have to ring up your electric utility to get some of the details finalised (eg your 'generating station number' and ROC ID).  For form filling you also want to have meter reading handy, especially at the key moments of April 1 and October 1.

Read the meter regularly:   It is also worth recording your meter readings, either daily or weekly, so you can compare your actual installation with what is theoretically possible according to the computer model. There is no tuning you can do, other than checking for bird shit on the panels... well rotating the house to face south better would do better, but that's slightly more difficult.
  If you have a handheld meter, the numbers will roll off when they are 30 days old, but you can download them with a USB cable to your PC/Mac, and of course you can read daily totals off your LCD display on the inverter. If you are really information minded, your inverter may be able to take a Web router, that sends data to the SMA website in Germany and stores/displays your data for ever - every day for the last or the next ten years! (you can see an example of this in a few articles below)
  My meter readings are a bit manic, as you can see from http://tinyurl.com/peverilmetering but you don't have to be quite this obsessive! If you do want to be this obsessive, then do not be afraid to ask for copies of the spreadsheet formulae, so that you can use dates and times to computer daily generation and consumption.