So I’ve been meaning to write a post that wraps up our first year of having a solar array…

This is some of what I wanted to cover:

Total Production: 6.2 MWh

This is 1MWh lower than estimated by our installers.  I believe part of this way due to an exceptionally overcast October and snow falls in January and February that covered the panels for long periods cutting production for those months by over half of their estimated generation.

CO₂ offset: >5 tons.

Annual electrical usage: <8.5MWh

The average electrical usage in our service area (central/southern Ohio) is 12.1 MWh. Our yearly usage for 8/08-7/09 was 9.6MWh which was probably lower than normal due to an exceedingly cool summer.  That 9.6MWh represents 80% of the area average; our usage this year of 8.5MWh is 70% of that average and just over 85% of our previous year.  My goal for the next year is to reduce our electrical usage to 7~7.5MWh, which should get us within striking distance of being 100% solar on an annual basis.  To attain this goal we’ve replaced our refrigerator which should save >1MWh/year and have a new 90+ gas furnace and additional insulation which should make our old house less in need of electric space heating and also reduce our gas consumption. I’d also like to replace our aging and inefficient A/C unit and work on getting my computers’ consumption down.

(In relation to this data and the difficulty I’ve had compiling it, I’ve been doing a bunch of research into a better usage & production monitoring solution and will post on my findings soon.)

 Solar Renewable Energy Certificates: 6 produced, 5 sold for $360/ea. (i.e. $1,800 I wasn’t expecting to have last August when the legislation went into effect).