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Prior Use
There are normally just two of us so our electricity use is low. In the 32-day June-July 2007 billing period we used 15.6 KWH a day. In the 29-day July-August 2007 billing we used about 18.4 KWH a day and our electric use now averages 18 KWH a day. Before we went to electric hot water, we used 14.6 KWH a day. With electric hot water our use first went to about 23 to 24 KWH daily but it dropped when we installed a solar hot water preheater.

Electricity Storage
There is no storage in this system -- we just give excess juice to the grid and take it back when we need it. The meter runs backwards when we are generating more than we use. There is no surcharge from the electric company; if they are charging 15 cents a KWH during the billing period, that's what they pay me when I "put it in the bank" and that's what I pay them when I take it out -- it's a complete wash. In other words, I store my excess electricity on the grid for free; no battery to buy or maintain.

Actual Electricity Cost
Here is the report from our first electric bill with the system installed: "The electric bill arrived today, the first since we have the solar installed. We bought 111 KWH during the nine days before the change and another 45 KWH during the twenty days following installation of the new meter. The KWH rate we pay dropped slightly however there is a fixed $16.21 per month "basic service" charge on both bills, so in a straight division of the bill by KWH it appears that the rate went up from last month's 17.2 cents to 24.4 cents. However when you subtract the fixed charge out of both bills and just divide the KWH charge by the number of KWH, we find our rate actually dropped, from 16.1 cents per KWH to 14.0 cents each. Last month's bill was $92.24. This one is $38.08."
Our Sunpower Story

In 2006 we decided to use sunpower for some of our energy and in summer 2007 we had a photovoltaic system installed. The sunlight collection system is pictured at right. This system turns light — not heat — into electricity. We are located at Schoharie, N.Y., 40 miles or so southwest of Albany. We turned it on on Friday, Aug. 31, 2006.

As expected, we generated a lot less as we approached the winter solstice. In September we generated an average of 9.8 kilowatt hours daily and in November only 5.7. The week before solstice on December 22 we generated only 1 KWH daily on average. Much of the loss that week was because of snow blocking the collectors but generally snow blew off or melted quite quickly. December 22 sunrise is 7:24 and sunset 4:27. The half hour or so at dawn and dusk are insufficient to operate the system so the maximum possible generating time is about eight hours.

In spring 2008 we saw some great collection days. One week (April 19-25) we generated 86.1 percent of our electricity. August 23-29, 2008, we generated 83.0 percent. But they did not top September 15-21 2007, when we generated 105.5 percent od our use. The lowest generation has always been in December: 5.5 percent of use in 2007 and only 2.0 percent of use in 2008. Our use is limited. There are just two of us and we are energy conscious. (I follow her around turning off lights.) Our average daily use during the 21 months September 2007 through May 2009 was 18.0 kilowatt hours. During that period we used 11,502 kilowatt hours: 4,977 that we generated and 6,505 that we bought. (That's 43.44 percent generated.)

We also added a solar hot water system but just as our contractor said, it is not as useful or efficient as solar electricity. The solar system does not provide enough heat to be a sole water heater and is used to pre-heat it so we use less electricity to heat it. Before its installation, we were using about 23.4 KWH daily. With solar hot water April 24 to May 23, we used an average of 18.4 KWH daily. We turned off the electric hot water for two days to see whether we could get sufficient hot water, and our electric usage dropped to 10.5. Ultimately, our "hot" water was tepid. We were gone for two hot weeks in July and still had only tepid "hot" water in the solar tank.

—Lester Hendrix, Schoharie N.Y.
email Lhendrix at NYCAP dot RR dot COM

SUNLIGHT COLLECTORS


Array of 16 solar collectors on garage roof,
Main Street, Schoharie, NY

We Cut Our Heating Cost 40%

Don't depend on getting burner service from your oil supplier. We asked several times whether a new furnace would be more efficient and the answer was that our burner was very efficient. The oil supplier even did an efficiency test to prove it, and scoffed at quoting a new system. Then we talked to Mohawk Heating in Rotterdam. We asked about the efficiency of a new system and the salesman was here the next day. They gave us a $5,000 price and installed it two weeks later. In March 2008, we burned an average of 4.4 gallons of oil a day. The last two years we averaged 8 gallons a day in March. That's 111 gallons a month. At $250 a gallon, that's $279 a month.

Don't Let the Oil Delivery Guy Tell You the Old Furnace Is Efficient.