Commissioned

As of 9:25 yesterday morning, I fully commissioned my solar PV system.  After an automated system check for ground faults and then an automated configuration of an AC sine wave to match the grid supply, the solar PV system started power production and began exporting power to feed into my home.

The system is such that my microinverters will seek to first feed the loads in my home, thus providing power in place of the utility grid.  On any occasion where my array is producing more power than I am consuming within my home, the microinverters will push the excess energy onto the power grid for use by everyone else and, at the same time, my new net meter will track credit to offset my power bill.

When I first switched on my solar PV system, the valley in which I live was covered by a heavy rack of low clouds that were mostly blocking the sun as they dragged overtop the expanse.  The system, at that time, was producing a mere 320 watts.  I left my home not long after commissioning the system and ran errands throughout a day of intermittent sunshine and cloud-shadow.   Upon returning home at about 4:30 in the afternoon, I saw that my system had produced about 4 kilowatt hours of power (an equivalent of 1000 watts for 4 hours).

In the simplest terms, the sun had produced about 40 cents worth of electricity for me.

That may represent a small step, for sure, but on long sunshine-days the cents will become dollars and I will be doing my part to provide for my own power needs in a clean and efficient manner.

Posted is another twice-as-smarter-than-me phone image of my array.

--Mitchell Hegman