Online Journal

January 2009. It's been a year now and I still get a thrill watching the morning sun creep down to the PV panels and trackers swinging around to catch maximum power. There has been zero problems with the Wattsun trackers, KC panels and SMA inverters. Last night the SWWP whisper 500 wind turbine made 7 KWh of power.

JANUARY 2008

24 KC 130w PV panels only. The production is from the Sunny Boy PV generation figures. The Sunny Island and Webbox power handling figures are a little misleading, as they seem to include power to the batteries, and count it again as it leaves the batteries. Our system is OFF GRID at the moment. It is necessary to manually switch from grid to Green and back with a two pole 200 amp disconnect in front of the home's entrance service panel. Update August 08...still off grid operation. No grid tie or synchronized AC operation. UPDATE AUGUST 09 NOW GRID TIED!! With 42 solar panels at 6.2 KW

6/17/08 19:49, JUST HAD A LONG HOT SHOWER!! It can't get better than this...57 degrees C. Solar Hydronic hot water, 95% battery soc. PV production 24.03 KWh. All from Sol. Zero Carbon Emission. !!Cool!!

7/2/08 Wind turbine finally 100% operational. I had to jam a stick into the controller to keep it connected and working!!! Welcome to technology! Same problem and solution with the solar hydronic control. If anyone needs sticks to jam into their system to make them work, give me a call.

August 07, used 2080 KWh from the grid. August 08, used 330 KWh from the grid. August 09, grid tied now, we generated 175 KWh more than we used. September 08, used 220 KWh from grid, Sept 09 over generated 119 KWh. October 08, used 83 KWh from grid.

2008 September 3 & 4, had to stay on grid for two days for hot water and electric power due to heavy clouds from a tropical storm. The battery bank charged back from 48% to 80% from the wind. Something that takes three hours in the sun via PV, but two days of high wind from a hurricane via turbine.

November 08, record turbine generation! I must have turbulence when the wind is from the South reducing generation drastically. I plan to raise the tower 30 feet early 2009. Photo at left now shows 96 foot tower. The ridge at the rear is 3.5 miles away. October 30, 2009, Total turbine failure on a sunny windy day!

August 2009, We are now GRID TIED! With 42 SOLAR panels! Generation is logged for the first full month, 947 KWh!! Only 16 KWh from the turbine. 9/28/09 17 KWh from turbine today and 55 KWh total! I started calculating production factors for my solar PV wattage August 09.

The author/installer/owner/operator.

January 08 February 08 March 08 April 08 May 08 June 08 July 08 August 08 September 08 October 08 November 08 December 08

January 09 February 09 March 09 April 09 May 09 June 09 July 09 August 09 September 09 October 09 November 09 December 09

January 2010 February 10 March 10 April 10 May 10 June 10 July 10 August 10 September 10 October 10 November 10 December 10

With the Solar Production Factor you can calculate how much solar PV wattage you need to install to offset your electric usage. If you need 650 KWh, then for the month of September 09 in SE Missouri, you would need 650/0.101(fixed array)= 6.435 KW solar PV fixed array. September 09 was a poor generation month compared to August 09. This data will be better after a full year of collection. For August 09 650/0.123= 5.285 KW solar PV fixed array. After a couple more months of data collection, I will dedicate a page to the data set spread sheet.

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