Month: July 2010
Solar panels: new meters
As part of our new solar panels, we needed new electricity meters. In particular, a new meter was required to measure the “gross feed in tariff”, that is, the amount of electricity we produce and sell to the grid.
The old electricity is shown above; clearly it’s pretty old. I wasn’t unhappy to see it go.
This is the new electricity meter. It’s digital, and is able to separately measure both the electricity we use, and the amount that the solar panels produce. Unfortunately it’s not the easiest thing to read and, most disturbingly, the Energy Australia installer had no idea of how it worked. So I guess it’s working OK, but it’s hard to tell.
Getting new meter wasn’t simple, and it’s yet another complexity involved in installing solar panels. Firstly, most solar panel companies aren’t able to install the meters themselves, as electricians need special certification to do the work, and the energy companies aren’t in a hurry to give it out.
So you’re likely to have to wait for the energy company to install the new meter. And wait you will. We waited quite a few weeks, and then had to make a few phone calls to actually get the contractor to turn up. If our solar power company wasn’t using their contacts behind the scenes, I fear the wait would’ve been even longer.
Tip: check carefully when and how the new meter(s) will be installed. Double-check any claims that the solar panel company can do this. If not, ensure that they are ready and able to push through the installation, via back-channels with the energy company if needed. Otherwise you could end up in limbo, with panels producing power but no money.
Insect hotels
Over winter, insects suffer from the cold like everything else. In the natural world, they crawl into warm places like rotting logs, dead tree branches, etc to survive until spring. Without this, winter can easily wipe out the “good bugs” that help keep pests at bay. (I’m not sure how much of an issue this is in warm Sydney.)
I’ve read in books about the idea of an “insect hotel”, an artificially created home for a variety of insects. Then I came across Arup’s insect hotel, which won a recent government-led competition in London. It looks great:
Of course, we could just leave more of the natural environment intact, but that’s probably not an option in public parks and spaces.
Installing our solar panels
Catching up on my backlog of posts, this is the next in a series of entries on our new solar panels, following on from our initial decision.
The first step of the installation process is to put up a pair of “rails” that the solar panels are attached to. With a corrugated iron roof, this is pretty straightforward. The existing screws that hold on the roof are removed, and the new screws put in for both rails and roof. Thankfully ropes were used at this point, so I didn’t have workmen falling into the garden.
Installing the panels themselves is then surprisingly quick. They simply connect to the rails, and are plugged together in series. Even including getting the panels up on the roof, they were all installed in under an hour.
Afterwards, the electrician came by and installed the inverter, which converts DC energy from the panel into AC that can be used. Everything was then cabled together.
Some things that I learnt from the process:
- While in theory there was space for two rows of solar panels, in practice, it’s limited by the location of the screw holes (and underlying beams). In this case, there was only row of screws that could be used for the panels.
- Finding a the right location for the inverter is important. Apparently they drop in efficiency when they get too hot, so they need to be placed somewhere in the shade.
- There wasn’t space on the main meter board, but there wasn’t a hassle in mounting it to the side of the house, some distance away.
- Make sure the display on the inverter can be easily read, as it gives useful information about how much power is being generated at any given moment, and the total produced in the day. (Ours ended up getting installed a bit too high up.)
- Like all work done on the house, it’s worth double-checking that the panels being installed are the ones that were ordered (there’s a model number on the back of each panel). No problems in this case, thankfully!
- The slow bit is getting the energy company to install the new meters that are required (but this is the topic of another post).
- Even without the meters, the energy can be used in the house. It was great to see the meter running backwards when the sun was shining!
Bright red radishes
These French breakfast radishes are super cute! Baby-sized and bright red, these are ready for the picking. They are also one of Miss P’s favourites.
We’ve got plenty of other root crops in the ground at the moment, some fast-growing but most taking their time:
- beetroots
- heirloom radishes (various colours)
- heirloom carrots (various colours)
- daikon
- onions (various)
- turnips
- spring onions
- leeks
- shallots
- potatoes (going in soon)
Lewisham House and Farm 