Net zero electricity

After a winter of using more electricity than our solar panel generated, we’ve finally gotten our electric meter back to the reading it had before we hooked up the solar panel. We’ve generated about 2.25MWh over about 46 weeks, and the remaining 6 weeks should be among the highest generation days of the year, so we will end up with more electrical energy generated than consumed by our household when PG&E computes the net energy for the year.  They’ll give us a tiny amount of money for the excess electricity, but nowhere near enough to offset the monthly minimum charge for being on the grid.

I expected the peak electricity generation to be around the summer solstice (yesterday, 2016 June 20), but the biggest daily generation so far was actually 11593 Wh on 2016 May 31.  I think that the offset is partly due to morning shadows from trees and partly due to Santa Cruz’s morning fog.