{"id":770,"date":"2011-07-16T14:42:50","date_gmt":"2011-07-16T14:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulaowenconsulting.co.uk\/?p=770"},"modified":"2015-11-24T16:32:55","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T16:32:55","slug":"my-secret-life-as-a-generator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/2011\/07\/my-secret-life-as-a-generator\/","title":{"rendered":"My Secret Life as a Generator"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been an exciting week this week, as I have now officially become a micro-generator and as such\u00a0am playing\u00a0my\u00a0part in supplying the grid with clean, green electricity – albeit a rather modest amount!\u00a0 My small, but perfectly formed, 1.68KWp PV system was commissioned last Friday and has been hard at work generating all week.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here\u00a0are some of the figures from my first week in the generation business:<\/span><\/p>\n

Total KWhs generated: Approx 40<\/span><\/p>\n

Typical\u00a0daily KWh generated: 5\u00a0 to 6<\/span><\/p>\n

Hours of generation 8am – 8pm<\/span><\/p>\n

Peak generation so far: 1.6 KWh<\/span><\/p>\n

Total FIT income: Approx \u00a318<\/span><\/p>\n

What has surprised me the most is that, even first thing in the morning (8ish) when the sun is not directly on my panels, I am still generating enough to easily cover my ‘base load’ electricity.\u00a0 Also, even when it is totally overcast and pouring with rain, I am still generating enough to cover my typical\u00a0usage.<\/span><\/p>\n

A\u00a0slightly irritating aspect is my average daily use of electricity is 5KWh (this hardly varies throughout the year); so if there was a viable, and affordable, battery technology that could store my excess generation through the day, in summer\u00a0I would be totally self-reliant on my own power.\u00a0 And hence for 6 months of the year my electricity\u00a0bills would be zero.<\/span><\/p>\n

One really useful gadget is the Wattson Solar <\/em>RTD\u00a0which was given to me as part of the package by my installer Joju Solar.\u00a0 This nifty device displays lots of different data.\u00a0 You can see what you are generating in real time; what you are using and then a net consumption value.\u00a0\u00a0I tend to keep it on the net consumption as\u00a0It great when it displays a negative value – telling me my generation\u00a0is outweighing my consumption.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, so far so good.\u00a0 The system seems to be working optimally, and even with our changeable weather this week it has delivered a reasonable amount of power.\u00a0 The Wattson allows a download of all the data onto computer, so I will be able to create graphs of generation and usage to share with fellow data nerds in future.\u00a0 Watch this space.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been an exciting week this week, as I have now officially become a micro-generator and as such\u00a0am playing\u00a0my\u00a0part in supplying the grid with clean, green electricity – albeit a rather modest amount!\u00a0 My small, but perfectly formed, 1.68KWp PV system was commissioned last Friday and has been hard at work generating all week. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-770","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-renewables"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1940,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770\/revisions\/1940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}