Saturday, September 7, 2013

First 3 months of Solar Panels in Seattle and we are making MONEY!

It has been ~3 months from when Puget Sound Solar installed my 4.3kW solar system. 

In that time we have generated 1,910kW.
Overall I am very happy with our Solar install and we have a nice credit with Seattle City light on our power bill.  I pushed and rushed Puget Sound Solar to get the install completed by July 1st 2013 so we could get the WA state sales tax exception.  After all that the state extended the Sales Tax exemption for some time longer.  Either way it worked out and we don't appear to have any water leaks or issues on the roof.
 
Now the APS interface and "software" that works with the Blue Frog inverters is not the best.  The web interface is hosted on a server in China and is real slow.  I personally have issues having a Linux based device (the APS Communicator) sitting on my home network. 
 
The APS Monitor (EMA Software) is the China hosted web interface that I'm not a huge fan of.  I was expecting software that was going to be installed on a home computer. The web interface does not allow easy access to the data nor does it perform well when attempting to view the detailed information on each inverter.  
 
It seems the Blue Frog inverters are branded as Made in WA but they are really manufactured by some company in China.  Then they come to WA where Blue Frog does some minor change to them that makes them be classified as made in WA.  Seems a little strange but hey I get .54/kWh generated because of it.
 
We have not yet received the paper work from the state of WA for us to provide our generation information so we can get our Generation Credit.  At the current amount we are looking to get 1910 * .54 = $1031.4 from the STATE!  Woot  Woot.
 
Everyone should get solar. 

2 comments:

  1. Okay that's nice that you're collecting tax money from the state but I hope you aren't letting that fool you into thinking that solar power is somehow economically viable now. If the gov't wasn't routing tax dollars into it no one would be using it.

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