Power to the People!

One of the things I've been researching, thinking about and planning is to have a solar photo-voltaic system installed at my house.

I've had a very small system on top of my shed (installed by my prior partner) for quite a few years. It powers a couple of garden lights. Well, actually only one still works.

I love the idea of generating my own power, and from since before the garden light system was in, have thought how great it would be to generate my own power for the house.

Thanks to technology, generous government grants to encourage folk, and some long awaited funds I now have my own solar pv system on the roof of my outbuildings:


There are 6 panels and they take up a surprisingly small amount of space:

You can see from the above I could easily fit another two sets of 6 panels at least on that roof. The garden light system panel is sitting on the shed roof just above the far right corner of the new panels (small dark rectangle on the white roof).

This is a 1.0 Kilowatt system and it's expected to generate up to one quarter of my power requirements going on my usual usage. It is shortly going to be connected to the city's power grid and then, if my house isn't using all the power the system is generating, the extra power will be fed back into the grid. The power company will pay me for this electricity - basically at the same rate as they charge me.

There's an inverter that changes the current/voltage from 12v to 240v so that the power can be used by the house/fed back into the grid. The inverter has a readout that shows how much power the system has generated since being installed.


At the moment it's stating it has generated 60Kwh (kilowatt hours) since it was installed 1 month ago. My average usage in winter over the last 5 years is about 14 units per day - so in one month I've generated enough power for just over 4 days. My most recent power bill which includes three weeks of the system being operations states on average of only 12 units per day. Not very impressive when it comes down to it.

However it is the middle of winter and the inverter panel frequently indicates the system is generating only about 25% of it's total capacity. Whilst the system isn't located in an optimum location (it was the best of the available options) I'm expecting much better performance in summer.

Considering the price of electricity has increased twice in the last four months by more than 25% at least I should be sheltered somewhat from the price increases by my lower usage of power.

But the real reason for doing this is not the money. Initial cost of the system was substantial even with the government grant, and I would not have been able to afford it other than I had some funds coming to me. And the money the power company pays me for the power I feed back into the grid is never going to be substantial. Even if they introduce the Feed In Tarriff they have been talking about that only continues until the installation costs of the system have been recouped.

No, the real reason for doing this is I just LOVE the idea of generating my own power. I don't know whether it's an independence/self-sustainability thing, or a be-kind-to-the-planet thing, but it just makes me feel really good inside :)