I've really screwed up the data collection for my power. I was going to put together a nice set of data and comparisons and whatnot for the end of the first year with solar, but it turns out I don't have a baseline. I've just been changing things too fast.
Moved into the house in 2006 and didn't have time or money to do anything for winterizing the house. Nice baseline but that's it.
2007 I had two roommates and did some winterizing. Now way to tell which effects apply to what.
2008 I had one roommate and installed a tankless electric water heater and did some more winterization.
2009 I added a crapload of insulation, had no roommates, installed a hot tub and solar panels.
So...no clue about any of the changes. It appears since I got the insulation done and winterized more this year I'm saving an entire 1 therm at the same average temperature.
Clearly I used more gas and electricity when I had roommates by a tremendous amount and I'm using far fewer therms now that I've got an electric tankless but it's almost impossible to tell if I'm really saving money.
I generated 390kw in December 2009 for a total of 1.52mw since the installation in October. I really wish I could figure out what is required for a monitoring system since REC won't respond to my questions about getting a datalogger installed. Sigh.
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2 comments:
I would think that 390 KW is pretty good for December. Do you have to spend much effort keeping snow off the panels? Too bad about the lack of baseline though. I would agree there's no way to wrangle usable data out of that tangled web.
As long as the snow is not frozen to the panels, it's pretty easy. I have a 24' extendable pole with the head from a shop broom on it. That generally works pretty well although I worry that I'm damaging the panels. Most of the time here, it melts off so fast I hardly have to worry about it, but if it snows and isn't mostly sunny the next day I'll try to brush it off.
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