Done and done

A momentous day has past - two major milestones.

Firstly, the September total has been met already - a series of good weather days at the start of the month, followed by good mixed weather afterwards has made the daily target of 8kWh per day very doable. Job done and still 12 days to make a profit.

Secondly (and probably the most important) that's also the point at which the total for 2012 has been reached. After double-checking the meter under the stairs, I can confirm I'm comfortably past the 2952 kWh annual target with over 3 months of the year to go. Admittedly these will not be the most productive months of the year, but it's all pure profit now, which is a nice feeling to have. It helps that so far this year I've beaten the target every single month, which given the poor weather is no mean feat, so I wonder what the output would be in an unusually good year. Maybe 2013 will show.

On an aside, I've now had to change my home laptop, which has been an experience in itself. So I've reinstalled the OWL software, but need to transfer over the database at some point. Hopefully no big deal. However, the interactive charts on the blog have been interesting - works in Firefox but not Explorer. So now I've no idea what's going on. I shall have to ask the nice man at work for his thoughts.

Watts going down

Recently I received an updated set of power consumption figures from my electricity supplier and I was interested to see by how much the solar PV system had reduced my imported electricity levels. Based on the figures supplied (which are far from ideal, being spaced at 80 day intervals) I got the chart below.

It's not a perfect way to work, but it does go some way to show the impact of the system. At the moment we are relatively high power users - part of this is the garden pond which can use 500 watts of continuous power in the summer (less in winter when some of the devices can be switched off) plus the air-conditioner in the summer can get the meter whizzing round too. (Although the latter has seen much less usage this year).

Based on a few rough calculations this would seem that I'm using about 7 kWh less of power a day since the panels went in - which seems a little high since this would suggest only 20% of power was being exported. I suspect we're being a little more economical than before and running the dishwasher and laundry during peak sunny times probably helps make the best of the system, hence not all of the drop is from the panels, some of it may just be our changing behavior.

7 kWh a day are equivalent to about £25 a month off the electricity bill, which is not to be sniffed out - the equivalent of £300 a year of additional return on the system (in addition to FIT and export payments). Not bad at all.

August

So that's August done and dusted. 

Weather-wise this was a strangely good month - without ever really getting going, it kept fine and bright and produced many good days that meant it felt like exceeding the prediction was a real possibility. By finishing the month 20% ahead of prediction on 411 kWh means it was the best month yet - here's to an Indian summer and a chance on completing the annual target by the end of September. Who knows, it might happen.