Now producing more electricity due to the current run of good weather, the Met Office is predicting below average rainfall and above average temperatures throughout July.

However, official statistics show that 2012 was one of the wettest years on record for the UK and June 2012 was the “least sunny” in records dating back to 1910.

Despite the bad weather, the Met Office’s solar PV array, installed at its HQ in Exeter over a year ago, generated 221,854kWh of renewable electricity, which was 747 kWh more than estimated.

Building services engineer at the Met Office, Peter Clayton-White, said: “Since the array was installed in June last year we’ve seen six months of below average sunshine and one of the wettest summers on record, but the system has still provided more power than we expected – which is very encouraging looking to the future of this investment.”

The array was completed by SunGift in June 2012 and generates around 1,000 kWhs of electricity per day – enough to meet the demand of one of the organisation’s supercomputers.

Leigh Stringer

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