As winter turns to spring, my solar system is celebrating its first aniversary. Lets look back and see how things went in year 1 of operation. My roof generated 8.3 MWh, a little over half of the 15 MWh my house used up during the same time. There were some teething pains, some wiring problems, and yes as expected some licensing delays while export permits were secured. But overall, not bad, the system reduces my net electricity consumption from 15 MWh/year to 6.7 MWh/year. From a power-hog to a minnow, not bad overall, oh and we saved some serious dough financially in the form of reduced power bills.
There is much dommsday discussion on EVs, heatpumps, AI and other power hogs comming after the electricity grid. But we also face a huge oportunity in all those rooftops that could be generating electricity. Well, I went ahead just over a year ago and put solar on my roof, as my annual consumption of about 15 MWh/year was almost twice the “typical Ontario household” as defined by the Ontario Energy board (source). I suppose my heat-pump, and EV might be the reason for this, as these two ensure that almost all of my home’s energy use is of the electrical variety.
Indeed, I generated a fair bit of my own power, cumulative over the year I generated a bit over half of the electricity that I consumed, not bad, from a total power-hog-home at almost twice the Ontario energy board’s (OEB) average home of 9 MWh/year, to a low energy lean home at less than the average Ontario home. I would call that a success (source). Looking at the number month-by-month I got the following.
As expected, when the heat-pump kicks into high gear in the fall, my energy consumption goes up with it, and yes the shorter days mean less solar production, but my solar system still did something in the depths of winter. Also, system was unable to export solar, until mid-june, which caused reduced production numbers for April through June.
There have been some maintenance issues with the solar system. A pinched wire crimped production from July through September, and lately a loose connection has caused about half of my solar array to go off-line. None of these are major problems, but it does suggest that while there is remarkable little maintenance, there is still some, and I am tempted to do a small project to ease roof access in the future.
The money side of things also does deserve some attention, overall, the system saved me about $1k in the form of reduced power bills. That is nothing to sneeze at, during the sunny summer months, we even managed negative power bills, which set the stage for nice discounts come the colder months.
There was lots of drama. From April to June, we could not export to the grid and earn credits, a big part of the solar payback. Further, the system had some issues July to September, and again in March. But overall, this exercise does show there is payback to be had with a solar and battery system, hopefully the technical gremlins will stay away and allow me to fully leverage the sunny summer months to earn more credits than last year.
Overall, a good start to my solar lifestyle. With export limits, system issues and more, I can’t wait to see what the next year of solar brings, I am anticipating further solar savings on my power bill, can we get to net zero, as in zero power bill? We will find out next year.
Electric car adventures 