From the Canyon Edge -- :-Dustin

Friday, October 30, 2009

Solar Installation - Part 5

As of 11am today, my PV system generated its first Megawatt-Hour of electricity


Current date/time: 30-Oct-2009 16:00:09

Daily Energy = 27.766 KWh
Weekly Energy = 123.155 KWh
Monthly Energy = 634.408 KWh
Yearly Energy = 1025.502 KWh
Total Energy = 1025.683 KWh
Partial Energy = 935.313 KWh


Fri Oct 30 16:01:29 CDT 2009

Current date/time: 30-Oct-2009 16:01:25

Input 1 Voltage = 300.503571 V
Input 1 Current = 9.931437 A
Input 1 Power = 2984.432373 W

Input 2 Voltage = 293.223511 V
Input 2 Current = 4.005443 A
Input 2 Power = 1174.490112 W

Grid Voltage Reading = 244.775589 V
Grid Current Reading = 16.397514 A
Grid Power Reading = 3985.880371 W
Frequency Reading = 60.003841 Hz.

DC/AC Coversion Efficiency = 95.8 %
Inverter Temperature = 49.636932 C
Booster Temperature = 42.354176 C


I owe a big thanks to Curt Blank, who wrote aurora, a GPL program that communicates with my Aurora Solar Inverter and generates the statistics shown above. We have been talking over email through the last few weeks, trying to debug a few issues with my inverter, which is a newer model than the one he developed his software against. I have a cronjob that polls my inverter every 15 minutes, logging statistics about my solar power generation. And I will be packaging aurora for Ubuntu Lucid shortly. Thanks for all your help, Curt!

The system has been running now for almost 50 days. I have averaged about 20.6 KW-hours of generated energy per day over the last month-and-a-half, with a maximum of 36.2 KW-hours in a given day. Now the days are getting shorter in the Northern Hemisphere, and we're in the rainy season here in Austin. So I'm looking forward to the long, sunny days next summer.

My PV system saved about $80 on my October 2009 electricity bill, which is really close to my predicted target.

Stay tuned for one more installment in this series, regarding the actual solar rebate!

For other articles in this series, see:
http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/search/label/Solar

:-Dustin

1 comment:

  1. This is really sweet Dusty. My Dad has been talking about doing this on his house in Mexico. Can you imagine the solar energy down there?

    ReplyDelete

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Thanks,
:-Dustin

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