Tommy's Ramblings: August 2014

Sunday, August 31, 2014

Birds of Paradise

Absolutely stunning. Watch this one in HD and Fullscreen..

Thursday, August 28, 2014

Billy Crystal makes tribute to Robin Williams

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

I was just sent an image by Johannes and it's wonderful. How the models are magically merged in with the background is absolutely amazing. Enjoy this art at the following web site johannesstoetterart.com

Monday, August 25, 2014

Now here's an oldie - Elvis lives on....

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Willie Nelson does a card trick...

Solar questions

Our friend Ray sent me a few questions on my solar installation. I've decided to post them here, just so that everyone get's to read the answers, just in case they had them as well.

"If your meter is running backwards, and I'm certainly not doubting that, then it should mean that your system is supplying some of its power into the central grid, and therefore, you are in effect acting as a source of private generation for the electric company."

You are absolutely correct on this. We are supplying any that we don't use out onto the grid. I think it's great when I hear my neigobors air conditioner running and I know that I'm creating the electricity being sold to them...

"And they also ought to have installed some special devices to prevent your system from energizing theirs during those times when they may need to perform maintenance on those lines, because if a crew works on their lines and they haven't got a means of isolating you from it, then your system could theoretically re-energize a portion of their system that they might be assuming was "dead" and therefore safe to touch, and that could be tragic."

Yes, the inverters that create the AC power from the DC voltage on the panels are designed to be grid-tied. They constantly monitor the incoming utility power and if it goes down, the inverters instantly shut themselves off. When the grid power is restored, they in turn turn themselves back on. This is required for the very reason you mention.

"I assume, however, that all of that was included in the planning of it, and therefore isn't a problem - but that meter running backwards has me a little concerned, because the only way that usually happens is if the power is flowing in the opposite direction - meaning from you back to them. And if they can't see negative readings, or don't want to recognize that there really are some, then they're throwing the rule book out the window, and leaving themselves wide open to a possibly serious accident."

Electricity is flowing back onto the grid. If there's a demand locally, I'll supply it. It's the path of least resistance. As far as their not being able to read negative numbers, I need to correct that slightly. When I said that, I was referring to their accounting/billing system completely. As I said above, the inverters take care of the safety concerns. There are also manual disconnect switches that can be thrown to the off position.

Hopefully that clears it up a bit. Any other questions, please feel free to post and I'll try and get you an answer. In another post I'll explain how the system is financed.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

An update on our Solar installation

Well our Solar system has been active for several months now and I thought I’d give you an update on it and how it’s performing.

I had contacted our local electric company to have our monthly budget reduced, but was told that I needed to wait until the meter was read on Aug 13, which we have done. Again I contacted our electric company and as a result of this most recent reading, we have reduced out monthly budget payment from $340 to $120. Now bear in mind that this payment includes both natural gas we well as the electric, but you and clearly see that we are paying out of pocket $120 dollars less. This is a good thing.

You can click on either of these images to increases it's size for easier reading.

It’s interesting that their accounting system has not caught up with this new “net metering” technique (aka. your meter runs backward). From the image above which is directly from out bill, you can see that our meter was read, on June 12, with a value of 7035 Kwh. The most recent, Aug 13 shows the same reading with a difference of 0 Kwh used. Their system cannot deal with negative numbers. In fact, and actual reading on Aug 13 was 6487 Kwh. Therefore we have banked, during this time, 548 Kwh.

Since the initial installation we have banked more because it was turned on in April. I just went and read the meter now (Aug 23) and it reads 6403 Kwh. It continues do run backwards. YES!!!