Today marks the 1000th day of operation for the 2.53kw solar array on our roof. Continue reading
1000 days of Solar
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Category Archives: Renewable
Two Years of Solar
Well, I guess the novelty wears off just a bit – the two-year anniversary of our solar anniversary came and went on June 29 w/o much fanfare or notice! Continue reading
Comparing PVWatts Estimates to Actual Solar Production
Click to enlarge
PVWatts is a website run by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) which can be used to estimate how much energy a given solar array might produce, based on historical mesurements of insolation. If you ever have a site analysis done, the installer will probably use it to estimate your potential for annual production, and you might wonder how close the the mark it’ll be. Now that I’ve had solar PV for almost 2 years, it’s interesting to look at how close the estimates were for my situation. Continue reading
pvoutput.org rocks!
(And in other news, I hit 5MWh of lifetime solar production today, woo!)
pvoutput.org is a free service run by a mystery man down under, which can accept solar generation as well as household consumption data, and slice, dice, and graph it just about any way you would like. Continue reading
A day in the life of a net meter
Ever wonder what the energy flow through a net meter looks like when you have solar on your house? No? Well, if you did, take a gander at the graphs above (click for a bigger version). Continue reading
What are individual actions worth?
I read an article over at Green Building Advisor.com, with the title/subtitle “Is the Green Movement Just Spinning Its Wheels? Can individuals make a real dent in climate change, or does our future hinge on government intervention?”
It was a fairly gloomy take on things. Continue reading
Hyperlinking my Solar Array
I’ve had enough people ask, while randomly meeting me as they walk down the alley, “hey, how do those solar panels work?” that I figured maybe a little object hyperlinking was in order. Continue reading
Hanlon’s Razor and Online Comments
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. – Hanlon’s Razor
Boy, but sometimes it is hard. There was a recent article in the local paper about a solar manufacturing plant going up on Minnesota’s Iron range. And you can bet that any article about alternative energy will bring out the interesting comments in droves. (Maybe this is true about any article about anything?) Warning: If you don’t want a boring rehash of anti-solar comments and my attempts to bring a few factual nuggets to the conversation, you should stop reading this post now. You have been warned… Continue reading
First Year of Solar
11 x 230W Siliken Panels, Enphase Microinverters
We’re at the 1-year anniversary of throwing the big red switch (yes, there really is a red switch!) on the 2.53kW solar PV installation on our home. Continue reading
3MWh and counting …
We hit 3MWh (that’s megawatt-hours) of solar PV production yesterday, a few weeks ahead of the 1-year anniversary of the install. In that time, we:
- Generated 3000 kWh
- Pushed 1877 kWh onto the grid
- Pulled 3278 kWh off the grid
So, that means we used (3000 – 1877 + 3278) = 4401 kWh in that time (for about 360kWh/month average), and we generated 3000 / 4401 = 68% of the electricity we used in our home. A bit shy of the 75% I’d hoped for but not too bad!
The monetary value of those 3000MWh is about $300 here in MN, at about $0.10/kWh (my baseline for comparison is the cost for electricity with Windsource, since we have subscribed to that program for many years now. It’s only slightly higher in cost, about $0.009/kWh, since the fuel charge gets removed for Windsource customers).
