2012 Solar Update
It’s been a few months since I’ve mentioned any solar info.
So here’s some info.
Back in April I showed you a graph similar to this.
This gives me a monthly comparison of power produced to power consumed from the grid. As you can see (click on the image to open it bigger and clearer) as the summer months roll along we level out on solar production yet consume more (much more).
This next chart does a year to year comparison of power we consume from the grid since we’ve had solar.
It does it with a month by month break down, but a monthly average per year is probably adequate. Looks like having a second kid has increased our consumption somewhat, though that could also be attributed to lesser solar production or hotter temperatures. Hmmmm all data that I have…
This chart does year to year comparison of power we push to the grid.
As I’d expect, we push less to the grid in the summer because we’re consuming most of it.
And finally a year to year comparison of power produced.
This data is according to the inverters. Since manually capturing data from my meters, I’ve learned the inverter data isn’t the most accurate, but it’s in the ballpark.
What does it all mean? How does it help us?
Not much on either account. The data is good, but my charting I think is mostly pretty pictures. The reality is monthly averages for each year of both grid power consumed and power created is about all I need to do two things:
- Decide we need to conserve more and take actions to do so.
- Have a somewhat decent idea the production system is working as it should. If I were to see a huge drop in production one year that carried into a second year and know there wasn’t some huge global weather event blocking out the sun for us, I’d know the system wasn’t performing as it should.
In the meantime, I’ll keep working on the pretty pictures.
– b