Hi, and thanks much for the welcome.
RegGuheert said:
… Is your house all electric, or do you heat water and/or air with something else? Or do you have time-of-use metering?
Natural gas water heater and furnace. Everything else is electric. TOU is unavailable where I live (I think). FirstEnergy charges about $0.12/kWh at all hours.
RegGuheert said:
By way of comparison, our original array produced an average of 14.25 MWh/year, but our demand, including the LEAF, is about 20 MWh. The heat-pump water heater and the LEAF account for about 2 MWh each. (Your LEAF likely will consume more due to your commute.) Perhaps 4 MWh/year.
PVWatts says our array will generate between 12-13 MW per year. I commute about 40 miles/day roundtrip, at about 4 miles/kWh (based on 10 days of I-270 masochism.) If my math is right, that's ~10kWh/day consumption * 5 days, for about 200-300 kWh/month just commuting. So, right, about 2.5-4 MW demand by el Sunloco Leaf.
RegGuheert said:
It looks great on your roof and your daughter is very cute!
Thank you. She likes plugging in the charging gun in the car's front port — the self-appointed "charging helper." Because the array had to go out front, and because I wanted to stay married, the aesthetics bar was very high.
RegGuheert said:
You can see the public page for our array in my signature. We live near Berryville, which is a doable round trip in the LEAF from Frederick, especially with a new battery! We'll have to get together sometime!
Sounds great. I like the heat map dataviz of your output -- more visually interesting than bar charts and fever lines. I'd be interested to see your 2011 and, since I'm a Leaf rookie, to hear about EV life from a Leaf elder (in Leaf years, of course!) Just in case you didn't know, there's not one, but two, DC fast charge stations at the Mom's Organic Market in Frederick. They're free, with lots of places to eat nearby. Mom's owner is a great supporter of EV and backs that up with significant EV incentives for his employees. Check out Lanny's (an amazing EV activist) post at http://pluginsites.org/dc-quick-chargers-at-moms-in-frederick-md/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
RegGuheert said:
One question: Do you have any issues with snow and/or ice slides damaging the roof or the gutter on your front porch?
Thanks for that link. Nothing apparent after two winters, although the shutter hardware on the sides of the front windows began rusting after the array went up. (You can see the rust stains in my photo.) I assume this is because of increased rain flow down the front of the house, or it could be a coincidence. I removed the hardware, and it was cheap-looking, like something you'd buy from Lowe's that was made in China. As you know in Berryville, this past winter was brutal in the mid-Atlantic, with extreme cold and above-average snowfall. The only unnerving experience with the array (yet) has been when, after a large snowfall, an avalanche of powder sitting atop the panels came crashing down and over the little porch roof and onto the landscaping below it. The house rumbled as the snow slid off. Felt like that 2011 Va. earthquake! The only casualty has been flattened azaleas.