solar and water capture update

Hello Everyone!

I thought it might be interesting to you interested in solar and water capture to see how things are going out here in Argyle, Texas!  The solar has been online since just before the new year and the chart below is a monthly report we have generated to see how much energy we are producing.  We generated an average of 25 kilowatt-hours per day during February, with a high of 36.38 kWh on the 28th.  As the days get longer and we have more sun, more power is being generated.  You can tell when we had either rain or an overcast day.  I am pleasantly surprised that even on an overcast day we generate a bit of solar energy!  Chuck has been checking the meter to see what our output is and we are generating about 50% of electrical usage thru the solar panels!  Now that we are having more nice days and the heat runs a bit less that percentage should go higher!  It was interesting to note that Chuck charted our usage and was perturbed to find a day (a nice day that normally would have seen less usage) had a somewhat higher than expected usage.  After thinking about it we figured out it was due to Chuck mowing (we have an electric mower and trimmer instead of a pollution spewing gas ones) and trimming the yard!  Amazing how much power those buggers use!  I found the chart below to be interesting, so wanted to share it!  Crazy how many "miles" we "saved" and the number of barrels of oil!

This chart shows the daily electricity production from January 15th through February 28th.  The green bar is the electricity produced and the tan bar is the additional amount that we used.

Ok, on to the water capture tank....I have to say, I look at rain and thunderstorms (here in Texas we call these a "gully washer"!) much differently.  Knowing a good ole downpour is going to fill up that tank makes up for the fact we have no energy being produced by the solar panels.  So, basically it's a win-win situation (really overcast days make me ornery, I must admit, because no sun, so solar, no rain, no capture).  We have calculated that for each 1/4 inch of rain, we get about 6 inches of water in the tank.  We had a beauty of a storm and got about 22 inches one day which was cause for a happy dance!  We use the tank water mainly for irrigation.  We figures out it takes about 2 inches of tank water to irrigate each zone in the yard (we have 8 zones). The tank can hold approximately 6 1/2 to 7 feet of water, so we can irrigate the entire yard several times with tank water.  I have no doubt there will come a time in July or August when the tank, runs dry, but a few fabulous summer storms can provided a good watering or 2!

Hope this post finds you all healthy, happy and recycling!

Love and composting (next on my list),
Lori