Friday, March 14, 2014

Solar Project Update #5

It's been more than 2 months since my solar panels went online and I've gathered daily logs on the output of the PV system as well as our utility meter.

Link to my logs

For January, the total energy produced is 49.3 KWH which is valued about 616 PHP. This is the amount saved from our utility bill. Our billed KWH for January 2014 is 380KWH, this means we were able to reduce the consumption by more than 10% and my objective for phase 1 was fulfilled.

For February, the total energy produced is 45.66 KWH, it's less than January but considering Feb have 3 days less than Jan, its daily average is higher. Our billed KWH for Feb 2014 is 352 KWH. We were able to lessen our energy consumption by replacing some of our CCFL light bulbs into LED light bulbs. One CCFL is rated at 11W and we replaced it with a 7W LED bulb and it's even brighter!

As of this writing, my replacement grid tie inverter is en route and should arrive by next week. Once installation is completed, it will be marked as phase 1b and an increased energy output is to be expected.

Phase 2 of the project will consist of a new PV array but this time it will use a string grid tie configuration. Tentative capacity will be 2KW and the objective is to reduce utility bill up to 50%. However,  phase 2 is many months away, maybe on 2015 but I'm hoping it can be done earlier. The decision to go grid tie again is because I found out that our utility meter is bi-directional and should be no problem when the PV system will produce more energy than what we consume at daytime. Installing an off-grid system is still on the table for cases of power outage and as backup in case our meter is damaged and will be replaced by a one-way meter.


1 comment:

  1. Nice Updates! thanks for sharing this info.

    Same here, we also use LED bulb/lights in some of our lighting

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