It's been a while since I last posted about energy things. Lots has been happening that has kept me away from posting, but the great thing is that nothing exciting has been happening with the home energy tech. It's just keeping on keeping on: generating, storing, balancing and keeping down costs.
I thought this would be a good time to have a look at the comparative similarities and differences between the months in each year. As a reminder, due to various installation and set up events I have set a working system start date of 1 Apr 2022. The plots below show monthly home use for Apr 22 - Mar 23, Apr 23 - Mar 24, and the months so far in Apr 24 - Mar 25 (at the time of writing this is Apr - Aug).
2022-2023
2023-2024
2024 - 2025 (so far)
The nice thing about these plots is that they show both similar overall (annual) total usage values for each of the three options (solar generation used in the home, the use of grid electricity and the use of the battery to power the home) and the patterns of use in each month throughout the year. What i am not quite sure of is the make up of the grid to home: for instance, in winter months we import into the battery at cheap rate periods and then use the battery to power the appliances in the home during the rest of the day.
Another thing that will be interesting to see in the winter months for 2024 - 2025 is the impact of our new electric vehicle. We now have a car with a battery size a third larger again than the Leaf. If the winter is cloudy, a lot of the electricity for the vehicle will likely come from the grid.
The following charts show generation totals by month for our solar arrays and depicts where is served by the generation:
2022 - 2023
2023 - 2024
2024 - 2025 (so far)
In these plots we can see that December 2023 was very dull, and summer 2024 has not been too spectacular either. However, the overall message is that the panels are generating well and as expected.
If you have the opportunity to install solar and/or batteries in your home then it's a very good way to buffer yourself against volatile energy pricing. And you are ensuring that your electricity is (in the main) green too.
