I like the sun and would miss it a lot if we were not to have it...Of course, without the sun life on Earth would not be possible so I'm glad we have it...Thanks universe!
Sun sustains all aspects of life on our planet and for humans is an important source of vitamin D, which helps our bodies regulate phosphate and calcium; These, of course, are important for the health of bone, muscle and teeth. Thanks to evolution our bodies have receptor cells that are able to transform sunlight that touches our skin into vitamin D...It's a nifty process...But I like the sun for another reason too...Its ability to make electricity!
I wrote a post a while back about moving house and my desire to get a solar collection and storage system installed on the new one.
I have a solar collection system at the house I moved away from which serves us well and we're weighing up the cost of adding one to the new place, plus a battery system to store the power, currently. It's a lot of money and so a weighty decision. You can read that other pose here. It's a stunning piece of writing, magnificent in design and concept, so please do yourself a favour. 馃槈
We haven't decided what we're doing yet although I thought I'd do a post, which I do a few times a year, about my solar array on the other property and what the numbers look like when compared to the same time last year.
2020 versus 2019
Total year 2020 馃憜
Above you can see the month by month of 2020...Year of the Covid-19 pandemic scam. It is fairly similar to 2019 from a production perspective but take a look at the consumed figure; 7.5MWh is 0.8MWh more than the previous year...And where was that usage incurred? Yep, in lockdown/work at home months during winter...May, June, July and extending into August and September. You can clearly see the additional usage in those orange bars extending below the centre line.
The other important figure is the amount of power imported through my power meter...1.6MWh in 2020 in comparison to 841.2kWh in 2019. That's a 47% increase over the total year.
That usage represents me working from home using the kettle, heater, computer, microwave, television and so on, a lot more than I usually would. This means that over the 2020 year I've approximately paid an additional 47% for my imported power over the previous year.
In dollar terms that's about an extra $711 AUD over the year. Of course, this is only a loose figure as there are different tariffs depending on the time of day and I don't have the power bills in front of me to give you an exact figure. It's a fair amount of money though I guess right? All because of the pandemic.
Total year 2019 馃憜
Of course, it could be argued that the system didn't produce quite as much power but that dip is marginal at 5.9MWh over 5.8MWh in 2020. No, the additional imported power is pandemic related.
I went back to 2017 to take a look at annual consumption and it was interesting to see a fairly constant amount until 2020: 6.7MWh, 6.2MWh, 6.7MWh then 7.5MWh in the respective years from 2017. Thanks pandemic.
Moving forward our figures will look much different considering we no longer live there. My wife still runs our business from there but that is mostly during the day (0800 to 1800 4 days a week) so the system should really start to operate well considering it produces during the day when the sun is up and that's when the power is also being consumed reducing the amount we import. In a few months I'll do a month on month comparison to see how it's going.
Day on day comparison
Just for fun I thought I'd show you a single day, one of my wife's work days, as opposed to a non work day.
The blue is produced power and you can see the nice curve which is the sun rising and falling. The orange, below the line, is the usage. You'll note here there are three lines of usage all on their own; That's the hot water system cooling down enough to then kick in and heat up using power of course.
?
January 20 2021 - work day 馃憜
January 19 2021 - Non work day 馃憜
Again you can see the nice blue collection curve but this time almost no consumption other than the hot water system cycling again, those downward orange bars. See the difference in the exported figures as well? 21kWh as opposed to 4.5kWh on the working day. The exported power, that's power back to the grid, gains us an income of 0.16c/kWh and offsets our power bill.
Rounding it all out...We've been really pleased with our system which has paid for itself and dramatically reduces our power bills which is why we are considering a system at our new house. The problem is though, that a collection-only system like at our other house means the power needs to be consumed whilst it's being collected. We're not at home at the new place during the day and so not consuming power, hence the need for the costly battery storage being required.
We don't know which way to go yet, I'm delaying the decision until we get the next power bill...I mean I want it but we're need over want spenders so it has to make sense...We're talking about a $15,000 outlay after all.
I thought I'd leave you with a little sun poem to end this post...You ready?
I like sun, it's very sunny
It comes up over there and then sets elsewhere
Sometimes it's bright, but not at night
Making it into power saves me money
Thanks for reading y'all, I appreciate it. I also value your comments so feel free to make some, ask questions of just comment favourably on my amazing poetic skills.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.
Be well
Discord: galenkp#9209
Top image, Mindil Beach, Darwin Australia.