Solar Panels - electician

The electrician was here bang on the dot of 8am (they said people would arrive between 8 and 10am).

He's working away fitting something called an 'inverter' in the loft.  There are things happening in the cupboard with the electricity meter and there's a small hole in the back of my built-in wardrobe (because that's the wall where several pipes go up, so it's an easy place to feed wires between floors) which I assume will connect in some manner to where a light switch is currently dangling free on the floor directly below on the other side of the meter cupboard..

He got here before Richard left for work, so Richard was able to give him a quick guide to useful access points for wiring.

Not much useful that I can do, so I'm just staying out of the way.

Panel people arrive

10am.  The people to install the panels have arrived.  There's a small snag, the men who installed the scaffolding on Friday for them to reach the roof didn't leave a tag to show it had had its safety inspection.  Don't yet know how this will work out.

Tags solved

Apparantly the 'tags' are no longer physical.  They're stored on a computer record.  So, the problem was quickly resolved and there's now men working on my roof.

pics of progress

Initial photos are here showing the workmen on the roof and the electrician in the loft.

Workmen have finished - now generating power

It's 1:30pm and the workmen have already finished.  It's a sunny day and my electricity meter is currently running backwards (the electricity company will be along in a few weeks to install a new meter).

The scaffolding will come down today or tomorrow.

This seems like a very good time to do some laundry, while the sun is shining and I'm generating at around 1.8KW. 

My little portable energy monitor shows current through the wire - it can't tell direction, so it shows the net flow.   It's showing 1.5KW, though the little meter the solar people installed in my meter cupboard is showing 1.8KW as that is the generation figure.  I typically use 2-300W during the day when I'm not using anything beyond the computer and the freezers.

Angle of incidence

Interesting to see the difference that the angle of the sun in the sky makes.  it's getting towards 4om now and generation has fallen to around 1.3KW - which is still far less than the 300W I'm actually using, but you can see the pattern.

Electricity use will rise a bit in the evening with lights switched on and more computers in us (though it's surprising what a difference it makes if you get serious about switching off lights in rooms you're not actually in).

It will be interesting to see how much difference clouds make.  If a cloudy day can still manage 2-300W, then it will be really useful.

Incidentally, if anyone is interested, this is the monitor that I'm carrying around the house with me to view the net electricity generation/consumption.  It's a remarkably handy little gadget.  I've been using it for a month or two and not only does it give me a good feel of which appliances use how much electricity, I find that now I'm used to the normal patterns, I can often spot when things have been left switched on elsewhere in the house.

At low readings during the day, I'll now find it tricky to tell difference between a small gain and a small loss solar electricity-wise, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.  I can always go and look at the solar reading in the meter cupboard if I really want to know.