Hi All
Our solar power system was installed on Monday and switched on at 4.30 pm.
The challenge I have set and started to think about well before installation was how do we reduce our energy demand, whilst maintaining our normal standard of living.
Without significant adjustments and there are still some more to be made our power consumption is down to 16 kW a day. This does not sound like a reduction until you realise we were using 18 kW a day in a rental of 96 m2 without air conditioning and we are now in a 233 m2 with air conditioning throughout the house.
Please note I think our power consumption is lower than this again. The figures are distorted as my wife was on holiday for Christmas period and this has resulted in an increase of power use. In addition Synergy decided not to send us a bill last billing cycle (our first bill) making data difficult to interpret. To make matters even more confusing we ran the inverter on the first night of the Solar being installed which we seldom if ever run for cooling as the night was horrible.
Synergy have not programmed the power meter properly so I cannot tell how much we are sending into the Grid. However the solar is outputting 2 kW an hour most of the day on average.
I have noted that our peak power use from 1.00 pm to 7.00 pm daylight saving time was 0 kW. This is the time when we come home, turn on the air conditioning, turn on computers, cook dinner etc. So this is a very promising result in lack of other data.