My first solar week

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PG&E came out and put in my "ENET" Time of Use meter, so I could officially
turn on my solar pv system and connect it to the grid.

I have 36 Kyocera KC125G panels on a Fronius IG4000 grid-tie inverter.

The inverter seems to come to life about the time of an official sunrise,
do some tests and synchronization for 5 minutes, and then come on line,
producing about 40 AC watts. It was sunny the afternoon the meter was
swapped out. I was producing 3800 AC watts while the PG&E guy was here.
Over the weekend, I hit a peak of 4170 AC watts. It turns off a little
after official sunset, and I've seen 31 watts in the evening.

Since then, it's been rainy and cloudy most of the time.

The new meter was started at a reading of 50000 kwh for peak and for
overall. It shows a display of how many kw are currently being pulled or
pushed, with a little arrow. (Go left. Go left.)

For a while, I was watching the peak reading go negative a little, to a low
of 49995 after two days, and the overall go up each day, to a corresponding
reading of 50046, then the rain came.

Now, I am seeing the peak going up about 3kwh per day, and the overall go
up about 30 each day.

The Fronius shows that it has produced 92kwh in 89:26 run time (some of
that before the meter was switched). 38kwh Jan28-Feb02.

I have the Fronius Home Monitoring software, but that's not working for me.
I can see the inverter display, but I'm not getting any history.

 

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the inverters). I don't have monitoring software. I read my meters
each weekend. I'm coming up on my first anniversary of operation.

I realize that I should just do that... pencil and paper once a week
should be a fine log... it isn't going to produce any more or less energy
if I watch it or not. ;-(

Furnishing 100% of your annual electric power requirements is a
fantastic moral goal (and I'm almost there, myself). However, paying
100% of your bill by providing peak power, and drawing off-peak power,
is no crime.

Certainly. As the salesman pointed out, the biggest bang for the buck is
getting the energy purchased from PG&E out of the over-baseline categories.
After that, it is only personally satisfying to generate more, not
financially advantageous.

The sun came out yesterday afternoon, and the the watts started flowing.
Fun in the sun had a different meaning before ;-)

 

[Glenn jacobs]

wow 36 125 Watt panels and here I have been living with 12 100 Watt panels
for the last 4 years and was real proud that I just received 4 125
Watt'ers.

jakeInHartsel

 

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wow 36 125 Watt panels and here I have been living with 12 100 Watt panels
for the last 4 years and was real proud that I just received 4 125
Watt'ers.

They fit on the roof. I couldn't buy less or it would look funny ;-)

I really hadn't pondered trying to just reduce the PG&E bill. The goal is
near zero dollars to PG&E for the year.

The PG&E guy that put in the new meter has 12*180 watts on his house.

 

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They fit on the roof. I couldn't buy less or it would look funny ;-)

http://www.rahul.net/dold/clarence/solar/2006-01-12-1128.jpg

 

[Glenn jacobs]

They fit on the roof. I couldn't buy less or it would look funny ;-)

I really hadn't pondered trying to just reduce the PG&E bill. The goal is
near zero dollars to PG&E for the year.

The PG&E guy that put in the new meter has 12*180 watts on his house.

Can't put them on the house, need to be able to clean the snow off in the
Winter.

Jake

 

[Glenn jacobs]

Hi, Jake.

Where's Hartsel? The only internet reference I found was Hartsel,
Colorado.

How many people live in your house? How much electricity do you folks
use in a year? How much do you generate? Are you grid-tied, or did
you have to pay for batteries? Do you have any gas appliances?

It's entirely possible that you have all the solar PV that you need to
own.

You are right on Hartsel, Colorado. We are actually about 15 miles from
Hartsel out in the middle of South Park at 9,740 feet MSL. The nearest
powerline is about 4.5 miles away, so yes we have batteries.

Well just two of us in the house. And of course we have learned to be
careful with electric usage. Where we live we do not need air-conditioning
and our heat is Passive Solar primarily, with a wood stove for back up, so
no forced air heat. The house is very open for this reason. We have a
couple of ceiling fans that are used to push some of the heat back into a
couple of rooms in the back of the house.

Our stove and hot water are propane. We do have a refrigerator and deep
freeze running on electricity. Except for a few small decorative
incandescents all of our lights are of the small fluorescent variety. I am
looking forward to when LED lights will become available and cost
effective. Computers take a fair amount of our power budget, with the
refrigerator and well pump being the biggest loads. Our freezer is in the
garage where temperatures stay pretty cool, around 40 in the Winter and
about 55 in the Summer. We only wash clothes on sunny days and we air dry
them.

We have clear skies most of the time; April, May and August being the
problem months and they are the reason that I am adding more panels. I do
have a back up generator.

And of course it is nice not having an electric bill and not to have to
worry about power outages during bad weather!

JakeInHartsel

 

[Jim Baber]

Jim Baber wrote:

[email protected] wrote:



Welcome, Clarence!

I'm in San Jose, California. My system is very similar to yours --
grid-tied, and with a TOU meter.

Mine is a little larger but I do know the elation you feel when it all
comes together. I have 76 of the Kyocera 158 W modules feeding 4 Sunny
Boy 2500U inverters. I do use a Sunny Boy Control to monitor the
inverters inside and it does feed one of my computers for reporting and
analysis. I still have to read my TOU meter manually, but I do have a
X-10 camera and photo floods hooked up so I can read it from my TV in
inclement weather. I log my meter readings frequently and did read it
just now. (PG&E will be here in about 10 minutes to get their
readings.) Our meter has been running on TOU since October 26 2002. It
took them 4 months to get it installed after I was started on E-Net on
June 14th.

I have 27 BP3160 PV modules, hooked
up to a pair of Xantrex GT3000 inverters (with one unused leg on one of
the inverters). I don't have monitoring software. I read my meters
each weekend. I'm coming up on my first anniversary of operation.

Don't fret about running a power deficit during California's rainy,
cloudy winter.

I agree with John, but you will be pleasantly surprised at much you get
thru some clouds.

Do you use most of your power in the early morning and
late evening? The summertime, mid-afternoon peak power that you will
generate is MUCH more valuable to the utility company than the off-peak
power. Your total kWh can run above that zero point (50,000 kWh on the
meter) by at least as many kilowatt-hours as it runs negative on the
peak power meter before you end up owing any money.

Furnishing 100% of your annual electric power requirements is a
fantastic moral goal (and I'm almost there, myself).

I was close last year, I missed it by 2216 kWh. I did end up with a
$400 credit for the year because of the TOU peak rates, unfortunately,
PG&E doesn't pay us for those credits.

I want 2 plug-in hybrid Prius+ cars, I'll be glad to trade my $400
credit for the equivalent of $0.70 of a gallon gasoline. That would be
the same as 571 gallons, which at a estimated 50 miles to aa gallon
would work out to be 28,000 plus miles of driving. This would be the
equivalent of $1434 worth of gasoline at today's prices.

However, paying
100% of your bill by providing peak power, and drawing off-peak power,
is no crime.

Enjoy!

+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+
| Ladasky Home Solar, Inc.: blowing sunshine up your |
| power grid since March 24, 2005. Fiat lux! |
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+
| Uptime Downtime kWh generated kWh consumed |
| 311 days none 5740 5852 |
+-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-+

Oh well have fun and enjoy your system -- Jim Baber

 

[SJC]

I am always amazed that power companies do not use power line networking
to read the meters from a central office. Instead, they send someone out to manually
read the meter. I would think they could save quite a bit of money having a computer
read thousands of meters.

 

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I still have to read my TOU meter manually, but I do have a
X-10 camera and photo floods hooked up so I can read it from my TV in
inclement weather.

I have a "security camera" left over from another project works fine in
zero light. I had thought about mounting it with a view of the meter. I
think I'll just walk out and read it occasionally.

I have been reading the meter, and the inverter front panel somewhere
around 5pm each day. http://home.mchsi.com/~cdold/Solar-generation.htm

 

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I am always amazed that power companies do not use power line
networking to read the meters from a central office. Instead, they send
someone out to manually read the meter. I would think they could save
quite a bit of money having a computer read thousands of meters.

The guy that installed the enet meter said the auto-reading meters are
supposed to be rolling out for PG&E later this year. He said something
about a device for each transformer, and suspects that it won't hit rural
areas for quite a while. Out here, there is one house, maybe two, per
transformer.

http://www.pge.com/news/news_releases/q2_2005/050616a.html

 

[SJC]

I would just like them to use networking to read KwH from every
home every month. Even if the power line network can only run at
110 baud, that is 10 characters per second. Fast enough to read
net use of 300 kwh per month. Certainly much more cost effective
than sending someone over in a vehicle to read the meter.

 

[Jim Baber]

I have a "security camera" left over from another project works fine in
zero light. I had thought about mounting it with a view of the meter. I
think I'll just walk out and read it occasionally.

I have been reading the meter, and the inverter front panel somewhere
around 5pm each day. http://home.mchsi.com/~cdold/Solar-generation.htm

Jim replies:
Anymore I usually read mine at noon. That works well for me, My PG&E
meter reader is almost always here at !!:30 to 11:45, so my readings are
in a similar time frame. This makes my calculations of what my bill
will be very accurate since I can use the peak use reading to calculate
the off peak just like the utility does.