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Old 07-26-20, 12:32 AM   #16
jjackstone
Helper EcoRenovator
 
Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Sacramento,Ca
Posts: 88
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It's been a full year now since this system was put online so I guess it's about time for an update. First off, I've had zero problems with the system since installation. That's a great thing. Never got a BMS for the batteries but I check them every couple weeks and they all are maintaining balance. I have harvested almost 2500 KWh of energy in the first year. Funny, to me anyway, that most of that energy was obtained in the winter and spring as I was powering a small electric space heater for extra heat in the house. My max daily solar output was right at 16 kwh in one day.

For the summer I had planned to buy a small window air conditioning unit but so far it has been a really mild summer for Sacramento. I've used 14 kwh total on the central air and the last time that happened was on June 4th. Our temps have mostly been in the low to upper 90's this summer with a couple short foray's over 100. So why no air conditioning? Well I live in an area that has low humidity most of the time and the area also receives a nice cool 55 to 60 degree breeze on most nights coming in from the Pacific ocean even though we are 80 or 90 miles away from the ocean. Locally that is known as the Delta Breeze. So open all the windows at night, cools the house down to the low to mid 60's, shut it up in the morning before the temps go up. The warmest it has been in the house since June is about 84 degrees and that was on a day when the outside temps reached 104. The last few days it has been no higher than 95 outside and 75 inside.

I have a video security system that I don't monitor that often but I connected a monitor to it the other day and the video on all four cameras was very ugly and unusable. I haven't determined whether the cause is the camera's power supply or if it is the video feed from the recording unit but since it wasn't working I unplugged it. Turns out the system pulls about 20 watts. My cable modem and router are in the same vicinity as the security system so I was thinking about them being powered 24/7. I will sit in front of this silly computer up to 6 hours a day and waste an enormous amount of time but the other say 18 hours those two things just sit there wasting electrons. So I went ahead and shut the router and modem down too. So the end result of this long ramble is that I am now able to get my idle power usage down to 33 watts at least when the roomie is not around. She is gone this weekend so I expect to have my first couple of days in which I use just slightly over/under 1 kwh for an entire 24 hour period. Man that's going to piss off PGE. Yay!
JJ
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