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Photovoltaic cells in temperate climate

Everybody knows that PV panels work perfectly in warm climate zones. But how about cooler regions  like central Europe or Canada where you can observe many cloudy and relatively short days?

Number of sunny days

Main factor influencing on efficiency of PV systems is number of sunny days per year. But surprisingly even locations on the north can have many sunny days during a year. For example average number of sunny hours in central Europe is about 1700 hours which is enough to produce energy in household PV systems.

Cloudy day? No problem!

Many skeptics thinks that during cloudy days PV systems don’t work at all. Of course this is totally untrue and PV panels stop working only if we completely cut access to the light. However it is true that during cloudy days their maximal power will be reduced. To minimize this problem you should use thin-layer pv modules or power optimizers.

Check our previous article and learn how to create your own PV startup !

Lenght of a day

Another important factor impacts on efficiency of photovoltaics cells is length of a day. In the winter, even during sunny days PV modules will never give you high efficiency. Luckily most of countries provide netmetering which is the best way to balance summer overproduction with lack of solar power in the winter.

Like you can see PV panels can work efficiency also in temperate climate. All depends on support mechanism and technology that we want to use. Nowadays average production of 1 kW of PV system in central Europe is about 800-900 kWh per year which is acceptable value. For example in Poland thanks to net metering such production provide SPBT under 10 years.
Thanks to that PV systems are more and more popular even in less PV-friendly areas with low irradiation level.