For nearly a decade, Apollo Energy has empowered homeowners in Colorado and Wyoming to save money on electricity by purchasing solar panels. When you go solar with Apollo, your installation will include a high-quality inverter that tracks precisely how much electricity is produced by your panels and sent to your home, battery (optional), and the utility power grid.
In this article, we outline the basics of solar performance monitoring and walk through the steps you can take to track your energy production and monthly savings after installing solar panels with Apollo Energy.
SolarEdge Performance Monitoring
Nearly every Apollo Energy system is designed and installed with a SolarEdge inverter: an efficient and powerful piece of equipment from one of the industry’s leading manufacturers. With a SolarEdge inverter, you can track your solar panels’ performance in real-time on your smartphone, laptop, or any device with the SolarEdge monitoring app, available in the App Store and Google Play Store.
Most importantly, Apollo's SolarEdge inverter and power optimizer installations allow you to see specific panel-by-panel production. In the event that a single panel shuts down, the entire system will continue to produce electricity for your home with the help of the power optimizers.
As your solar energy system generates emission-free electricity year after year, you can monitor its performance (as well as individual panel performance) over time in the SolarEdge app with easy navigation to see daily, monthly, and annual production. In Colorado and Wyoming, homeowners can usually expect the following solar panel performance patterns:
Daily: Throughout the day, solar energy production typically takes a “bell curve” shape. While some electricity will be produced in the morning and early evening, the majority of peak solar production hours occur between noon and 5 PM.
Monthly: Over the course of a year, expected solar energy production is aligned with the number of daily sunlight hours. For this reason, solar panels usually produce the most electricity per month in the late spring and summer from May through August.
Weather-Related: Although seasonal showers or snow can temporarily slow down solar energy production efficiency (and clean the dust off your panels), the Front Range is an excellent region for consistent, sunny weather. With that said, homeowners in CO and WY should spot-check their systems and monitor ongoing performance after local storms in the very rare case of solar panel damage from hailstones.
How to Monitor Your Solar Energy Performance
Though many homeowners enjoy checking their panels' performance time and time again, extensive monitoring is not necessary to ensure solar savings. Solar energy systems are extremely reliable and require very little ongoing maintenance, so we only encourage our customers to glance at their production every now and then.
In a database reviewed regularly, we monitor all of our customers’ solar production data and can typically diagnose solutions to underperforming, irregularly operating, or non-working systems remotely. With a local and licensed team readily available, we replace damaged or malfunctioning parts as soon as possible to minimize energy losses and maximize solar savings.
Apollo Energy is your solar partner in CO and WY.
As a local company dedicated to our neighbors up and down the Front Range, Apollo Energy strives to eliminate the guesswork at every stage of the solar process. Our goal is to deliver the most possible value to all of our customers with unique and flexible solar energy solutions for every homeowner.