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Yes, we can use a battery monitor to see how much power is going into the battery bank. And we can look at the solar charge controller to see how much power it is making.
But how can we tell how much untapped power does our solar have in reserve? Put another way: how much more stuff could we be running off the solar?
about these summaries
You can get a feel for overall system efficiency by
Real-time harvest is a bit easier since there is no time component. We are working in Watts (W) rather than Watt-hours (Wh). What we are doing is comparing the strength of sunlight reaching the ground (perpendicular) vs the angle at which it actually strikes the ground, or strikes a flat-mounted panel.
From the subarticle on this topic:
Examples: if you have 200w of panels, your mppt controller typically yields 83% after derating, and the calculated cosine is .70 then you might expect ~116w in clear conditions at that time in that location. (200 x .83 x .7 = 116.2).
If observed 94w at that place/time the overall system efficiency would be 94w/116.2w = 80.9%. After you make many comparisons like this you will start to see a patter in your system's ability to harvest power. If it's 81% over time we can start to multiply the solar zenith angle calculations above times 0.81 to predict how much power our particular system could make on average.
Continuing from the example above:
, your mppt controller typically yields 83% after derating, and the calculated cosine is .70 then you might expect ~116w in clear conditions at that time in that location. (200 x .83 x .7 = 116.2).