With solar systems being so easy to maintain, and so great for the environment, it’s easy to see why more and more homeowners throughout the US are investing in cleaner, greener energy. But, is your system working as hard as it should be, or is it under producing and not giving you the savings you deserve?
Accurately monitoring your solar system is essential if you’re ever to know whether it’s giving you the savings it should, and relying on monthly energy statements from your utility provider, will not enable you to properly gauge the system’s performance. While a bill being higher one month than previously will indicate that there may be a problem, it isn’t the most dependable way to track the performance of a solar energy system.
Solar power and your monthly energy bills
Your solar system will generate a different amount of energy each day depending on the weather and time of year, and because utility rates are in a state of continual flux, either of these reasons could attribute towards a variation in your energy bill, rather than a decrease in performance.
Because your energy bill is given monthly, this could mean that you won’t know if your solar system isn’t performing as well as it should, for several weeks at a time, and monthly statements don’t give you any idea of how much energy was generated by the solar system for your home, only of what energy was fed back to the grid.
Additionally, any energy that is fed back to the grid, tends not to be itemized, so using any statistics from your monthly bill to try and see if your solar system is under performing, is tricky.
What should you do instead?
Rather than depending on utility bills to give you an indication of your solar system’s health, there are better, more effective ways to do so, by checking the following:
Is there anything blocking light from reaching the panels, or dust or debris covering them? Keep them clean and free of obstructions to help them perform at their best.
If the breaker switch to your home has been tripped by a power surge or something else, the solar system may not be able to provide power to your home.
These come with indicator lights that are continually green if the system is working as it should, but which go red, orange or yellow and flash if there is a problem.
By checking to see if the total kilowatt-hours are increasing every day, you can get an idea of whether your panels are working properly.
If you have a solar monitor system installed, you can gain access to energy production in real-time, and even see how much energy your neighbors are generating in comparison to you. There are other things you can check with a monitoring system, and should any issue arise with your solar system, at any time, the monitor will inform you.
If you feel that your solar system is under-performing and would like more advice on how to rectify the issue and maximize you energy savings, be sure to reach out to your solar panel installer.
[addtoany]