May was a warm and rainy month. (52% less heating degree days than April, 7% less sun). This partially resulted in 20% lower energy usage in May. We only used 4.8 kWh for space heating. Our daily average usage was down 23% from April. We generated a 558 kWh surplus this month, our third surplus month in a row.

  1. January values based on meter reads.
  2. February values based on TED data.
  3. Heating Degree Days (a measure of how many outside degrees in a day it is below a target inside temperature)
  4. Calculated from our HOBO outdoor weather monitor hourly data, unless otherwise noted.
  5. January HDD data downloaded from degreedays.net, Station ID: KALB (Albany International Airport).
  6. March values based on meter reads. (TED died March 1st, eMonitor installed March 16, 2012)
  7. Values based on eMonitor data.
All values in kWh (except HDD) Jan 2012 1 Feb 2012 2 Mar 2012 6 Apr 2012 7 May 2012 7
Solar PV generation 369 597 860 925 867
Usage 873 666 515 378 309
Net usage or (generation) 504 69 (345) (538) (558)
Average daily usage 28 23 17 13 10
HDD (base temp 68F) 3,4 1,212 5 1,045 704 617 298

May was our second full month of circuit level data monitoring. The largest percentage of our energy still goes toward producing hot water (151 kWh). The second largest load was all the unmonitored circuits including the refrigerator, coffee maker, ventilator and all lights and plug loads (108 kWh). The water pump, clothes washer, and dishwasher as a group tied with the Dryer and Range for 3rd place (ranging from 14 to 16 kWh). Now that we have our clothes line, our dryer energy usage has gone down. The heat pump came in last.

All the data is available at netplusdesign.com. You can now view solar, usage, net usage, temperatures and HDD for all of February and circuit-level data for 16 days in March and the full months of April and May.