welcome to the organic green doctor blog

i am a family physician who was diagnosed with
early mild cognitive impairment(mci) amnestic type on december 21, 2010
this is a precursor to alzheimers disease
because of this diagnosis i have opted to stop practicing medicine
this blog will be about my journey with this disease
please feel free to follow me along this path
i will continue blogging on organic gardening, green living,
solar power, rainwater collection, and healthy living
i will blog on these plus other things noted to be interesting

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

solar helps

SOLAR HELPS
here at the country n we have solar panels
16 of them 
that can generate up to 15 kw of electricity each
if the stars align themselves just right
which
you know in real life they never do 

so if  we have a perfectly sunny day in the summer
maybe around the longest day 
we can reach that 15 kwh a day

throw in a little dust on the panels
or 
a few clouds passing over
or
a small summer shower
then that number will drop 

even on a cloudy day we can produce several kwh of electricity

this year we havent had a lot of rain and clouds 
so we have had a lot of sun
so we have produced more electricity than usual

so here is how it all works here at the country n














first the sun hits the panels which are situated on our barn
that obstruction there that planking ogd could block some 
of the solar production

from there it goes to an inverter inside the barn
which converts the dc current to ac current

from there it goes to my electric box and meter

from there it either goes into the house 
or
up the power line out into the lines along the road
and somewhere along the way it get sucked up 
by neighbors and businesses down the line

now someone off the grid
like our friend in utah
uses the electricity as its produced and any 
excess is stored in big old batteries for future use

since we live in texas 
at the country n and those of us in texas
do net metering where any excess goes into the grid














here is a copy of my last electric bill
they charged me $22.50 to be just hooked up to the system 
the amount of electricity that went through my meter was 702 kwh
the amount of electricity that went through the meter that was
produced by the country n was 152 kwh
leaving us a net amount of 550 kwh to pay for

of course what you dont see on the bill is the amount we used
that came directly from our solar panels during the day
since it was a sunny month that could be 0-300 kwh
it was probably closer to the 300 number
i am not as ocd as i use to be about doing this calculation

so when the suns shining during the day our meter is either not 
moving
or 
its spinning backwards

its hard to describe what it feels like to watch your
electric meter spin backwards
there are only a few things in this world that tops this
you can figure out what those are

if i want to know in our system how much we used of our electricity
that did not go through the meter
i have to do a  monthly reading 
on my inverter to calculate that number
ive had the system too long now so i never do that calculation
i am not as ocd about it as i use to be
 
so most of our electricity we buy occurs after the sun goes down

so our bill then was
$22.50 for just being hooked up
$57.86 for their electricity
$15.99 credit for my electricity that went up to the grid

with ?$ of electricity used directly 
easily calculated if i wanted to do it again

the most electricity we could produce under maximum conditions
would be 450 kwh a month
so this last month we consumed 702 kwh
if it was a perfect month we would have only bought 252 kwh 

now my rainwater brothers system is a newer one 
his meters tell him how much he produced
how much he used of his electricity and of theirs 
how much the electric company bought or credited him
all i know is it feels good to watch my meter go backwards sometimes
and 
to know that a good portion of our electricity we consume
we produced our selves

that 
is what net metering means

the organicgreen doctor

2 comments:

  1. I wonder if the government will try to tax sunshine like they are trying to tax rain water collection systems? Good luck figuring that one out!
    Cowgurl friend

    ReplyDelete
  2. now that you mention it several states are now planning to do just that
    to tax sunshine
    if you have a solar system you will have to pay a tax on capturing that sunshine
    doesnt seem right does it
    togd

    ReplyDelete