Monday, May 24, 2010

Meter Readings for Last Month (or So)

I haven't posted any numbers for a while, so here goes. I don't track everything on a daily basis anymore. It was too much work, and I ended up losing my data when my computer crashed anyway.

Now I just look at the electric meter once in a while. To me this is the most important number because it summarizes the balance between power generated and power used.

[These are all a.m. meter readings.]

April 12: 17,510
April 13: 17,475
April 14: 17,493
April 15: 17,454
April 19: 17,353
April 21: 17,300
April 25: 17,213
April 28: 17,251
May 5: 17,294
May 17: 17,118
May 24: 17,140

A decrease from the previous reading means that a surplus has been generated and exported to the power grid. An increase means the opposite.

The reasons for fluctuations is obvious -- on cloudy days we don't generate as much power. On hot days we use more power (A.C.)

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Camping Out for the Solar Rebate

Interesting little blurb in the Courier Post (Cherry Hill, NJ) today. 1100 people submitted applications for the state solar rebate on the same day last week -- some of them camped out waiting in line to do so (I guess there must have been some kind of deadline).


The State Board of Public Utilities has stopped accepting applications until September. I can't imagine there's enough money to cover even the 1100 recent applicants.

Money is tight here in New Jersey right now and the new governor is cutting a lot of programs to try to balance the budget. Programs like this will probably be the first to go.

Here's the article.

http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20100512/NEWS01/5120340/Solar-rebate-program-put-on-hold-by-state

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Bummer, Only two SRECs

I was hoping for three, as I already posted, but we only had two April SRECs to sell in the SRECTrade auction on Friday. Oh well, we only netted $1330 (selling price was $665). That ought to pay a few future electric bills...

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Auction Friday

The auction for April SRECs is on Friday. I'm still pretty new at this but I can't imagine that I haven't generated at least two. We got shut out in March but I'll bet we generated .9999999 SRECs in that month. Add that to the two+ I'm estimating for April and it looks pretty good. Is three too many to expect?

That would be about $1900 -- we're chipping away at the initial cost. Cool...