Saturday, December 12, 2009

Solar Roof

We've had our solar panels in full operation for about 6 weeks now and I am very pleased with their performance. Our best day was in November when we captured 22 Kilowatt-hours that day. On our worst days when it rained hard al day we still captured nearly 2 Kilowatt-hours. Each of our 24 panels has its own inverter and the inverters all report their performance every 5 minutes to a monitor inside the house. That monitor is connected to the manufacturer's web site which presents us with a minute-by-minute performance analysis of the system. We get a lot of detail from this report. You can also see most of this detail by clicking here. You can also see the performance of similar systems all over North America by clicking here.

The bottom line on our experience with PV solar in Everett, Washington is tat IT WORKS. We are producing about 60 percent of the power that we are using -- somedays a lot more, somedays less. I expect that the initial investment will be recouped in about 10 years at present energy prices.

2 comments:

  1. Who did you purchase your system from and what sort of cost was it? I'm very interested. Running a small farm out in Duvall.

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  2. We purchased from Puget Sound Solar. The total cost for the installed system was about $37K before the incentives. Total up front value of the incentives was about $14K. But we had to put up most of the $37K. We get the biggest incentive on our 2009 taxes, as soon as I file.

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