On October 7, we washed the solar panels for the second time, the first time being two years prior in the summer of 2004. Our water usage was about $12 more than the previous bill. I'm thinking the savings on our next electricity bill should make up for that. Looking at the Daily PV Production graphs for previous years, October production usually runs about 7 KWH/day less than September. After the panels were washed, the October numbers are matching the September numbers, which implies that cleaning the panels has gained us 7 KWH/day, or about a 25% improvement.
This year we had an unusually dry January, which means more sunny days than usual.
We used an average of 56.7 KWH/day this year compared with 53.6 KWH/day last year. We got a waterbed this year. We also got a new HD video projector. I don't think it uses more power, but we may be watching more hours each week. It was really nice watching the Planet Earth series in HD.
last changed 2009.09.19
Carolyn Luce Last modified: Tue Feb 22 20:03:49 PST 2005