Sunday, 17 August 2014

Now that I've had my solar generation system for a little while, I thought I'd write a follow up post on how it's all going.

Energex came out a week ago last Saturday and swapped my electricity meter over for a new digital one that measures grid consumption and excess energy exported. Prior to that point, it was quite fun to watch the old analog meter going backwards. I took a few readings after the system was installed, through to when the analog meter was disconnected, and the meter had a value 26 kWh lower than when I started.

I've really liked how the excess energy generated during the day has effectively masked any relatively small overnight power consumption.

Now that I have the new digital meter things are less exciting. It has a meter measuring how much power I'm buying from the grid, and how much excess power I'm exporting back to the grid. So far, I've bought 32 kWh and exported 53 kWh excess energy. Ideally I want to minimise the excess because what I get paid for it is about a third of what I have to pay to buy it from the grid. The trick is to try and shift around my consumption as much as possible to the daylight hours so that I'm using it rather than exporting it.

On a good day, it seems I'm generating about 10 kWh of energy.

I'm still impatiently waiting for PowerOne to release their WiFi data logger card. Then I'm hoping I can set up something automated to submit my daily production to PVOutput for added geekery.

First up on Friday morning was Zoe's dentist appointment. When Sarah dropped her off, we jumped in the car straight away and headed out. It's a long way to go for a 10 minute appointment, but it's worth it for the "Yay! I can't wait!" reaction I got when I told her she was going a few days prior.

Having a positive view of dental care is something that's very important to me, as teeth are too permanent to muck around with. The dentist was very happy with her teeth, and sealed her back molars. Apparently it's all the rage now, as these are the ones that hang around until she's 12.

Despite this being her third appointment with this dentist, Zoe was feeling a bit shy this time, so she spent the whole time reclining on me in the chair. She otherwise handled the appointment like a trooper.

After we got home, I had a bit of a clean up before Zoe's friend from Kindergarten, Vaeda and her Mum came over for lunch. The girls had a good time playing together really nicely for a couple of hours afterwards.

I was flicking through 365 Science Experiments, looking for something physics-related for a change, when I happened on the perfect thing. The girls were already playing with a bunch of balloons that I'd blown up for them, so I just charged one up with static electricity and made their hair stand on end, and also picked up some torn up paper. Easy.

After Vaeda left, we did the weekend grocery shop early, since we were going away for the bulk of the weekend.

It was getting close to time to start preparing dinner after that. Anshu came over for dinner and we all had a nice dinner together.