A few years ago if someone suggested I'd be happy and willing to lose power I'd have looked at them as if they were crazy...These days I'm overjoyed to lose power; The more the better!
I recently did some calculations and found out I had lost 17.67% of my power...Usage, compared to the same month a year ago. That's right, I mean power usage loss!
I refer, of course, to my household power usage which I am able to track through an app connected to my mains power meter and solar array on my roof. You can see a couple of snaps from that app below and whist it gets more in depth I simply wanted to show the difference for the same month, January, over two years.
Firstly, you can see I have consumed less power for January 2020 over January 2019 which is good; That means more effective power management, better power-saving habits. You can see we improved by 118kWh which is pretty good. (That's the 17.67 percent I refer to above.)
This means we have imported less from the grid and therefore have saved money on our power bills. Keep in mind this is a month only. This is pretty good considering in Jan 2020 we produced (collected) a little less power than we did in Jan 2019 which must have had more sunlight. Again, it comes back to better power-usage habits though.
The real benefit shows in the amount which we have imported from, and exported to, the grid though; It is the power we collect and export to the grid that earns us the monetary rebate. We actually get paid for the power we send back. Nice huh? It's clear that 2020 was a better January.
Over the lifetime of our system, (October 2016 installation) we have collected, or produced, 20.35MWh of power from the sun, imported 12.52MWh and exported 10.76MWh...We have consumed a total of 22.12MWh. This means we have only actually imported 1.76MWh of power from the grid and so our power bills have been significantly reduced. Our quarterly bills are much lower, almost 80% we worked out, and that's got to be a good thing right?
For the first few years I never used to check the app, mainly because we didn't have enough history of data...Now it's been a few years I find it interesting to see what the solar array does and how it affects us. I check it every month for the previous full month and always smile...Als when we get our greatly reduced boll too!
I have contemplated adding batteries but have decided against it for a few very valid reasons, however it will happen down the track on our next house. For now we're happy to have a much-reduced bill.
If you happen to have a solar array I'd be keen to know how it's been working for you and what impact it's had upon your power costs. Feel free to comment below.
Tomorrow isn't promised - Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default
An original post written by a human
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