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One year solar anniversary! 616 dollars saved!

After one year of solar generation and data collection, the good news, particularly interesting to you San Franciscans worried about the effects of fog, is that solar does indeed work year round, even in our peculiar climate.

Below is a graph of kilowatt hours generated each month of the year, starting in November 2009 through October 2009.  As can be expected, the lowest month of generation is January with 260.59 kwh (not surprising given the short days of winter), the highest month April, with 500.84.  In most places on our hemisphere, this number would go up higher as the days lengthen in June, but our fog came a little early this year.

For those of you interested in the bottom line, I have to start by apologizing for an earlier omission to our monthly costs.  PG&E has been billing us monthly for the costs of energy distribution and other fees, but not our actual energy use, which accumulates every month until the true up period one year later (some months are positive, others negative).  We just paid our true up bill of $196.91, so I owe you a year's accounting.

I am comparing the total costs of pre-solar 2008 and solar 2009, including all payments to PG&E and  to Solar City for our monthly lease expense of approximately $30 per month.  The comparison is by cost only, and does not compare usage (which to our chagrin, even with our efforts to turn off more lights and replace lightbulbs, has increased by about 300kwh for the year).  The cost comparison also does not reflect the increase in PG&E rates for electricity, which are impossible to account for this year as PG&E has just switched to a time of day metering.  

Total savings for the year are $616.38 with almost 6,000 pounds of C0² offset!

July Solar Update - SF fog vs. sun...

Forget June gloom, we actually had a nice June this year with over 455 kwh generated and a PG&E electric bill record low of only $3.04!

Now that the fog is really here for our typical cold San Francisco summer, I thought I would post the solar data from two back to back days, one sunny, one foggy.

The first is from this Tuesday, July 14, a glorious clear summer day with 19.42 kilowatts generated.

The second is from Wednesday, July 15, a thick foggy summer day with 8.58 kilowatts generated.

The fog definitely puts a damper on solar generation, but it still generates a respectable amount.  We'll let you know how it averages out when the bill comes a the end of the month.

If you haven't yet seen it, pick up a copy of the local paper, the Ingleside Light, with a prominent story on our system, our savings, and our first solar party!

San Francisco Solar Map

The City of San Francisco has a goal of 10,000 solar photovoltaic installations by 2010.  To track these installations and to give businesses, nonprofits and homeowners a place to see what has already been installed in their neighborhood, they have developed a website called the  San Francisco Solar Map.  Here you can get an idea of the size and annual savings of systems in your own microclimate.  To also help you determine if going solar might be right for your property, the website includes an interactive tab "What can solar do for you" that will give you a quick analysis of potential savings based on your address and roof size.  Links to local solar installers, tax credits and the fabulously generous  San Francisco Solar Initiative, which currently gives immediate credits of  $2000-10,000 for installing a system, can be found on their site. 

The solar map has just been updated for the first time in over 6 months (sadly budget cuts have affected their ability to keep up to date more regularly with new installations).  Our own installation is finally listed on the map, which helps bring the total to 1311 documented installations - a good start, but still very short of the 10,000 goal.  We know that not all systems are on the map as we have one neighbor in Westwood Park not listed.  We encourage you to contact the organization if you don't find your installation listed, and if you haven't yet considered solar for your property, contact any local installer for a free site specific estimate.  They will look at your PG&E bills and your roof layout and give you a much more accurate assessment for no charge.  The credits are great right now, but with the budget cuts our governments are facing, there is no guarantee of how long they might be available.

May Solar Update

Thank you to everyone who attended our solar party last month.  We had over 30 people in attendance throughout the course of the day, including reporters from the local Ingleside Light paper.  We'll let you know when the story is published!  For those of you who couldn't be there, let us know and we can set up a private tour, or organize a second party if there is enough interest.

Thank you again to Solar City for their presentation on solar photovoltaic systems and for the refreshments.  Thank you to Building Solutions for information about home energy testing and solar water heating.  I learned that SolarCity is the only company around providing lease options instead of a pure purchase for solar panels.  This program is what made solar finally possibly for us as our upfront costs were only $29.  Their program is apparently widely popular as they now have an 8 month waiting list for leased systems (direct purchases can be processed and installed much faster).  All the more reason to look into solar soon and get on the list!  Just announced this week is a partnership with US Bank that creates a tax equity fund that should hopefully speed up leases.  Check out the press release.

On a personal note, our PG&E electric bill last month was $12.03, down from $99 the year before.  Our total savings to date $615.03 and 3453 pounds of CO2 offset!

April Solar Update and PARTY!

A beautiful month of sun = a beautiful month of savings!

From our SolarCity Monitoring program, over 500 kwh were generated in April and only 569 were used.  PG&E electric bill for April was $12.83 compared to $103.75 last year at the same time.  Including our $29 monthly lease payment, total cost was $41.83 for a net savings of $61.92 just in one month.

The graphics below generated through Create a Graph shows a comparison of total electric costs by month before and after solar.  Total saved to date: $556.99 in 7 months since October.  We will continue to update the data through the year as it will be interesting to see how our typically foggy July and August will factor in.

In the meantime, if you want to know more, or want to see our system in place, we are hosting a solar party open house this Sunday, May 17 from 4-6:30.  Please RSVP by this Thursday evening so that we can purchase refreshments.  If you have any questions, please call Christine or Bob at 415-587-2004.

January 2009 Solar Update

January is generally one of our wettest months in the Bay Area.  While we desperately miss our rain and the family conversation at the lunch table centered on what we could do to save and store water, the number of clear sunny days has allowed us some fabulous solar generation.

This graph from our Solar City monitoring software shows total power generated each day of the month. The peak is on January 29 with 13.16 kwh generated. The lowest point was on January 22, where we did get clouds and rain all day and only 1 kwh was generated.  Our January bill last year was $135.10 for 764 kwh of power use.  This month our total electric use was a bit lower at 679 kwh, but with 260 kwh generated during the day offsetting the more expensive tiered power, our total electric bill was still an amazing $12.82!  To date, subtracting lease costs and upfront installation costs, we have already saved almost $400 and 1400 pounds of CO2 in these four months!

We will be planning a solar party soon and invite you to join us to see our system and hear the technical and financial details directly from Solar City.  We'll keep you posted - details will follow soon.

Green Home Guide Posting

We are pleased to announce that we have been selected as the Green Professional of the Week by the USGBC's Green Home Guide website.  Check out their site Green Home Guide to see our technical responses to questions regarding wind energy analysis, options for environmentally friendly entry doors as well as residential solar installation options and costing.  They seem to be a great source of practical technical information from professionals in the design and construction fields.  Let us know what you think.

December 2008 Solar Update

As the December days got shorter and colder and we found we really did need the lights and heater on a little longer, we got a little worried that perhaps our solar output would not generate enough to compensate for our increased use.  Our December bill last year was $150.15 for 741 kwh of power use.  This month our total electric use was actually bit higher at 811 kwh, but with 265 kwh generated during the day offsetting the more expensive tiered power, our total electric bill was still an amazing $12.83!  To date, subtracting lease costs and upfront installation costs, we have already saved over $300 and 1081 pounds of CO2 in just three months!

This month our daughter is working on her 7th grade science fair project with our solar system at the center of her research.  She climbed on the roof for the first time this week and projected shadows on the panels to test their output capability in less than perfect conditions.  Check back next month for a detailed analysis!

November 2008 Solar Update

We just received our second statement from PG&E and have more good news to report!  After two months of operation, our solar system has already saved us $131.93! Our total electric bill for November was $25.16, compared to $128.28 last year.  Adding the solar lease payment of $29.00, our total electric cost is $54.16 for a savings of $74.12 for the month.  Attached is a spreadsheet with our electric use and cost data for the past two years.

Download Electric use & cost data

After two months of operation, our solar system has now generated 578.70 kw of power, offsetting 741 pounds of carbon dioxide!  We can all breathe a little bit better now!

Solar - do it with a friend (or a stranger)

In my first blog, I mentioned the idea of organizing a system to solicit neighborhood group pricing for goods or services, especially as a way of getting lower unit costs for solar system installations.  Little did I know that such a system already exists - founded here in San Francisco of course! We read about it in the Chronicle, which I think is doing a great job with green news, by the way, in an article by Paul Kilduff published October 11.  See article .

With the unlikely name of 1bog (for "one block off the grid"), it is a bargaining collective founded by Sylvia Ventura and her husband, Dan Barahona after they struggled through installing their own photovoltaic system.  They were doing tons of research trying to understand the different options and the technical aspects of these systems and determined to make that information available to others, setting up an informational website, www.solar4SF.org, to do so.

But then they realized the other major stumbling block stopping people from setting up these systems was financial - even with government subsidies the prices were too high.  So their next idea was to set up a bargaining collective - a way of helping many people deal collectively with solar vendors to elicit the best pricing and service. the system seems to be growing fast and has brokered a good number of systems already. Check out the collective's web site: www.1bog.org . Do it with someone you love - or just a friend - or someone you've never met.