The solar water heating system which provides the hot water, the heating for the floor slab and stores the balance of the heat generated in the ground below the floor slab was turned on on Tuesday and has been up and running since.
The five arrays are now installed and fully operational, If only we had a run of cloudless sunny days.
The PV system has now been working for 19 days (since the 1st Feb) and so far we have generated 185Kw of power, of which 99Kw has been sent to Meridian. The house was using 16Kw per day prior to the DSHH system being turned on at the start of the week but since then has only used 12.5Kw per day as the hot water is now coming off the roof.
The array system is a big target for the local ducks who fly around and do their business on the roof. Must be a good target as I've already been up to clean the waste away.
On a good day we have been getting runs of over 14Kw from the PV system and on the poor days when its been raining our low is 3.3Kw. The average run has been 9.7Kw per day mainly as a result of the poor summer. If we averaged 12.5Kw the house would be self sufficient.
Here you can see the Photovoltiac system with the measuring system. The LED chart graphs the power generated each half hour and each day. In this case the chart is showing the power each day since we turned it on.
And in the laundry we have the cupboard with all the switching and pump system for the hot water system. The unit on the top on the right is the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) which keeps everything going during power spikes and on the left is the little computer and readout which shows how the system is performing.
The first of the recorded results will be on the separate results page next week along with charts.
