Use Less Stuff: May 2014

Friday, May 16, 2014

Solar is up and running!!!

You might want to click on this so it's easier to see, but this is a graph of our power usage and creation with our new exciting solar panels which are up and running as of Wednesday afternoon! The green line is energy production, and the red line is energy use, so we are putting power back to the grid already, and it's even overcast today! This graph just shows the last 10 minutes. Earlier we had the dish washer running and our energy usage spiked above our energy production, but now nothing major is on - probably just the fridge, the stereo, and a couple lights. As you can see, we've saved $14 so far! Anyway, it's pretty sweet.

A cool interesting thing about this online power graphing is we can turn things on and off and watch our energy usage change in real time, so we can see what things draw the most power. For example, I always let the dishes in the washer air dry in order to save energy because they dry just as fast as the heat dry, but I discovered today the heat dry doesn't seem to draw any noticeable power. Neither does the stereo or plugging my laptop in to charge. Yet having a burner on high to boil water for tea made a significant jump. I'm about to make cookies, so I'll be interested to see how much the oven draws.