Solar power has changed our household. It was not necessarily the wisest investment, and had I known all that there was to know before I installed it I probably wouldn’t have installed it. But even so, it has completely changed how we understand and use power within our own household, and in addition to the power the panels have provided, it has led us to reconsider our use on many appliances to make more efficient use of the power supplied.
Solar power does not generate a consistent amount of power every day. The worst days will be when it is rainy or overcast the whole day through. On these days, even our 1.5 kWh system might only generate 1 kWh of total power – barely saving us 25 cents.
On brighter days, it may generate ten times this amount. The problem is, during the brightest of days, we have very little need of daytime energy.
We are with an energy provider who offers us a very good rate overall, but who does not allow us to sell surplus energy back to the grid. This means we must find creative ways to use the surplus. One of the best ways I’ve found of using up surplus solar energy is to make evening meals using a slow cooker that you leave running during the daytime. This can easily consume 1.8 kWh of your surplus, and take that energy off the grid for the requirement of cooking an evening meal – a process that is far more efficient, as evening meals regularly use 2 to 3 kWh to cook during peak hours when solar supply is not available.
So to make better use of solar, you need to make sure that you have not only the supply, but also the household demand. Planning your solar use effectively is like a game that can literally save your household thousands of dollars over a few years.
I would not recommend solar for just any household. One of the first things you must do is assess your own household consumption. There is no real automated way to do this, so it requires a lot of planning and recording. You cannot glean these sorts of insights from your energy bill.
That means standing at your smart meter and recording power consumption levels on the hour, day after day if need be, and across multiple seasons if you want a really accurate forecast. Getting a real time picture of how much energy you use during daylight hours will improve the viability of your solar installation. Half of solar is in the planning.
This is an important step. One of the worst mistakes you can make environmentally is to buy more than you need.
Were an app or piece of software available that could parse your power consumption data and do the maths for you, this would greatly improve the efficiency of solar power installations worldwide. An upfront understanding of how and when your household actually uses power is critical to planning.
Solar is something that can be optimised through planning.
