Cali Kid Corals

Solar coming soon!

Today was a better day, still cranking out 200 watts or so, because the sun is at a fairly extreme angle, but considering this morning was absolute crap whether I actually cranked out almost 15 kWh worth of power today! I think that more than easily takes care of the fish tank for the day, I think I need to hook up the kilowatt meter again just to double check what a daily usage is :D
 
Sweet, 15 KWh on an almost rainy day.
Probably thanks to that lucky sunpower panel upgrade.
A lot of cheap panels drop to zero below a certain threshold of sunlight.

Curious : Did you get the new E19 series panel?
 
I'm fairly sure they're not the E19 series, looking at their brochures I think they're the ones that are 17.3% efficient. But yeah the installer was surprised they were still making power so late in the day when it was so heavily clouded, but mind you it wasn't making MUCH power.. 50 watts out of 3440 watts :D However every little bit helps spin the meter the other way! (although I don't think the older meters spin backwards)
 
Hehe, well I can verify mine doesn't spin backwards, and I'm pretty sure when I'm pushing 3kW that I'm making more than I use, the kill-a-watt meter showed my tank only using 1kW at the time, and my fridge wasn't running, maybe the computer was.

Really digging the solar though, yesterday was rainy/cloudy all day long, still made 9kWh. Today was a nice sunny day, 18kWh so far, and the KaW meter says my tank only used 7.8kWh, there's still night time electrical usage (heaters, pumps, etc) but I think I got enough of a jump on it.

I'm going to choke saying this, but I want a smart meter installed just so I can sell back power :D I want quite a bit more data, but from the looks of things it might even be favorable to go to an E-6 rate, so I can sell back pricey day time electricity, and buy back cheaper night time stuff. Always thought I'd have to reverse the tank lighting schedule, but I dunno, looks good right now as it is. I'll have to wait until seriously rainy winter months to see how feasible that is though.
 
I like the new smart meter.
Fortunately, mine seems to work. Not really sure what the big deal is other than crappy customer service.
You install a million fancy pieces of equipment with low cost labor, and surprise - a few don't work right.

The cool thing: You can download your daily or even hourly usage to a spreadsheet.
Very handy when you tweak things to save power.
And you can definitely see when those lights click on/off.
 
Ok I need to correct myself, what Jon said was true they do turn backwards, I noticed last night it wasn't turning at all, apparently the electrician knocked the wheel free/loose when he pulled the meter off the wall, I fixed it though, last thing I need is PG&E doing an "estimate" on how much power I used because the electrician didn't hook things back up right.

Also noted my total tank energy was 15.5kWh, so that night time heating is killing me, at least I get a 'free tank' on sunny days for now :D Next step I guess is to enclose the tank in an insulated room, so it doesn't need to heat as much.
 
Minor update: Just looked at the inverter says to date I have made 1500kWh to date, not too shabby considering how many cloudy days we've had.

Can't really say for sure what it's done to the bill though, simply because between a bunch of electricians and a few PG&E people I've had 3 different meters, and they haven't seemed to actually record the old value of the meter (bastards better not estimate what it is!!!) In fact the last bill there wasn't even electricity recorded on the bill, not "0kwh" simply no mention of electrical usage... who knows I might be lucky and am officially "off the grid" ... fat chance on them forgetting to bill me though :D But 1500kWh/ 4 months = 375 kWh per month that is not on my bill.

That said, I also found out I might have a digital meter but its still not a smart meter... so I don't get the nifty updates as far as usage. It's been pretty brutal here though with the cold weather on the tank though.
 
Alright, end of year bill is here (I think... or I owe a shit-ton of money and someone made a mistake :D).

1 year of electricity w/ solar. Net bill = $315, so a little over $26/month... not too shabby!
 
welcome to the club!

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Yanno didn't even notice the panels on your roof when I went over last time, could be because the weather was so crappy I didn't even think of it.

Either way, just ran numbers on how much a used vs baseline quantities, and I can say for certain that while I didn't produce more than I used (on average), on average it knocked me down to baseline quantities with my 300+ gallons of tank... downstairs in the cold ass garage... man I hate San Francisco, it'd be nice to have it upstairs in the warmth, but Noooooo there's not much room in the house.
 
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