We have solar!!

Well on 17th May we had our solar panels installed. 

While we were happy to have them installed early (we were originally told the second week in June) it was a bit annoying knowing they were sitting there ready to be saving us money buy generating our own electricity, but we couldn't flick the switch because we had to wait for our meter to be changed over. Unless of course we wanted to pay for the electricity we were sending back into the grid, because we had one of the digital meters which cant differenciate between electricity going into or out of the grid.

Expecting to be waiting until early July for our meter change over it was a nice surprise to come home Monday (18th June) to find that we had our new meter and could flick the switches, and start to make our own electricity. Hopefully saving us money, well after this next bill comes in which is likely to be twice our usual amount, because it should have the meter charge on it as well as a full quarter of (non solar) usage.

On the plus side in the last couple of days according to our new meter we have exported more kwh's than we have used!!!! So hopefully this will continue to allow for the extra usage we have in winter when we use the airconditioning.

Now the geek in me is itching to set up a spreadsheet to track our usage and feed in to the grid and see how close we are to what we had initially estimated as we didnt sign up early enough to get the 44c or higher feed in tariff for the next 10 years we will be getting a guaranteed 16c Feed in Tariff until 30 September 2016 plus minimum retailer payments which change each year


Our Feed in Tarrifs will be:
21.3c - To the 30 June 2012 (16c +7.1c)
25.8c - 1st July 2012 to 30 June 2013 (16c + 9.8c)
27.2c - 1st July 2013 to 30 June 2014 (16c + 11.2c)

Which is less than even the lowest tier of our electricity usage, so even with exporting more electricity to the grid than what we use I am still expecting that we will get a bill