November 2013

November has proven to be a damp month with less sunshine than last year. We struggled to get an increase in power generated during the month with the best day being right at the start with just over 15 kwhr's on the 2nd.

The amount of PV power generated at 304 kwhrs for the month is less than the 342 kwhrs last year, however we are still above the total for the year.

October Results

Well October turned out to be a very wet and windy month and hence less power was generated from the PV system than last year. However we are well ahead of last years total run.

The DSHH system continues to perform really well with the core temperature now up to 25 degrees and just about ready to turn of winter mode and put all of the heat into the core.

The yield for the month from the PV shows a steady increase on the fine days with 15kWh being generated on the 27th but with over 12 days with less than 5kWh.

The power for the month was 270.5 kWh which is slightly less than last year, however the good start in summer still means we are on track to exceed last eyars run. The year to date is 2.312MWh and since inception 4.916MWh.

The core temperature has now risen to 25 degrees, and this is 5 degrees higher than this time last year. We will be turning the system to summer in the next two weeks and then all heat will go direct to the core so we should see a rapid rise into the mid 30 degrees by March.

September Results

Another month goes by and the days get longer and the sun starts to get more hours in the sky.

In September we had a very wet month and as a result we only achieved 221.5kWh compared with last year when we had 263kWh.

Year to date we are well ahead of last year with 2.0148 MWh and 4.654MWh since turn on.

The Digital Self Heating Home system continues to perform well with the core now starting to slowly climb. as of end of September the core is up to 23 degrees and I expect by the end of this summer should be in the high 30's.

The garden is doing well and here is a couple of photo's of the front garden, the Chatham Island Forget-me-nots and the tulips.

August Results

We are now past the winter solstice and the results are again trending upwards as expected.

We have now upgraded our system so that the system can continue to operate in a power cut and hence the system is now fully redundant for power during daylight hours.

The results for August are as expected with nearly 10kWh mid month but overall an updward trend compared with previous months:

I'm expecting to see a steady climb in the next few months as we get longer days and a better angle to the sun.

July Results

Well we are now slowly climbing out of winter and getting a few sunny and longer days.
This last month has seen 144.57KwHr's produced slightly higher than June with 105.62KwHr's and with a peak on the 30th of 8.79KwHr's

Here is July's power run for the month.

We are now more than half way through the year and the total power generated each month compared with last year is displayed below. We have now generated 1.6MwHr's this year and over 4.2MwHr's since turn on.

During the month we have also had installed an extra solar panel specifically to run the DSHH water pumps in a power outage. The 250w panel is enough to run the two small pumps that move the hot water around. This now means that in a power outage we have full cover as long as the sun is out, but recognising that this is when the water also gets heated.

During the recent major power outage which was also during a very cold southerly the house was off the grid for over 24 hours/ There was no sun during the outage and thus the house slowly cooled from 22 degrees to 18 degrees so never got cold. A good test for the thermal seal of the house. As a result of the drop in temperature we are replacing our front door as most of the heat loss was due to poor sealing of the standard door against the uPVC surround. We are now installing a uPVC door which will provide a full thermal seal (should have done this originally!!).

May 2013 Results

Well the pundits got the weather right during May with a lot more rain than previous years and hence little sun to benefit from.

The house continues to perform as expected albeit that the core temperature has now reduced to 23 degrees at month end. 

We have now started the install of the self reliant power system for the DSHH system with an additional 280 watt panel being mounted on the roof just to power the pumps and the back up system in a power outage. This will protect the water system from reaching over 100 degrees and turning to steam.

The results for May are as follows.

The month was very patchy with no good days and with the top power run being less than 10kwhr's.
June is likely to be similar and then we start the climb back up to the peaks.

April Results and promotions

Well another month slips by and the results are still on track with expectation.

This month has been time for my regular lecture to Victoria University third year Architectural Design students. The presentation covered the sustainability drive for the Department of Conservation and our sustainable home. We are also providing a talk to Johnsonville Lions at their regular monthly meeting on the features in the house.

April was a quite month as we ease into autumn, with the month delivering 181 kwhr's nearly 50 kwhrs less than the same month last year. There were not many really good fine days with very patchy and overcast weather albeit virtually no rain.

Annual Report on the House now Completed

Go to the new page on Annual Results to see the written report on the analytics for the 2012 year. This data is also being used in presentations to community groups.

 

Grant

Results for March

Well the weather in Wellington continues to amaze with excellent daily weather conditions for early autumn.

The month has provided a significant increase in the daily Kwh that have been produced with 304.4 Kwh in total compared with March a year ago when we had 280 Kwh produced.

As you can see from the chart the power generated from the PV system has performed extremely well and is currently tracking above last years results.

The results for the month showed a consistent collection rate albeit slowly declining as the days shorten.

The daily run is now down to around 12 -13 Kwh for a good day and will continue to decline as we head into early winter.

13 months and all settling down

Well here we are a full 13 months after we turned the main systems on at 11 Hollyford Place.

The Photovoltaic has been working steadily for us even though we had a poor summer last year. This year we have really ramped up the kwHrs with the month of February delivering 281 hours of sunshine in Wellington ... that is an average of 10 hours sunshine each day. The February chart shows the consistency we had in PV kwhrs during the month.

As you can see there were a lot of days with close to 15kwhrs delivered and as a result we had a much better month than last year.

The DSHH system has also settled in and the core is now up to close to 31 degrees (it fluctuates from start of day to end between 29 and 31. This is 10 degrees higher than it was at the end of March last year when it hit its high for the end of summer/autumn having risen from 14 degrees at turn on in mid January. WE have been told to expect about a ten degree increase each year with about 5 - 6 degrees being used each winter from the core. At this rate it takes about 4 -5 summers to reach the steady state of 45 -50 degrees.
So all looking well for the coming winter where the floor slab will be set for 23 degrees which should give us an air temperture in every room of the house of about 21 - 23 depending on the time of the day. We shouldn't have to use any supplementary heating like we had to in mid winter last year.

The water heating is steady at a daily 60 degrees at the top of the tank and no issues with hot water.

Look for the annual summary which should be posted by the end of the month.

One year on

Well here we are one year after we turned the systems on.

So what has it been like living in a sustainable home..... Well the results have proven themselves to a large extent... with the house never getting below 17 degrees C at any time during the year and with the DSHH system now having stored quite a lot of heat in the core this coming year we shouldn't get below 22 degrees all year round.

The photovoltaic system has been churning out power on a regular basis and we have generated nearly 3 megawatts over the year.The house has been cosy and warm all year, low humidity and hence feels really healthy and while we have had a few minor hiccups with the systems they appear to have now settled down.

January was an excellent sunny month with the best month yet in power generated with 354.6 Kilo watts generated with over half the days getting close to the 15KW per day.
Look out for the full analysis of the first year including comparisons against the original specifications and cost benefits later in the month.

A further update to our harvesting of the sun.

You should go to the Results page to see the latest update on the harvesting of the sun.
A full analysis will be available in early February at which stage we will have 12 months worth of results and a record of all Meridian bills etc...