First Billing for Total Solar Month

We just received the March bill from APS. This marks the first bill where we generated our own electricty for the entire month. At the time of the meter read, we had 349 kWh in credits (now over 480 just a few days later). The total bill is for $8.54, with the breakdown being: (click on the image at right to see the details)

Basic service charge $1.74
Metering $2.48
Meter reading $1.71
Billing $1.92
Regulatory assessment $0.01
State sales tax $$0.44
County sales tax $0.06
City sales tax $0.18

At this time last year we used $3.71/day, this cycle was $0.27, and it is all admin charges and taxes. The days are getting longer, and we generate more each day. Last month we got about 44 kWh out of a day, yesterday it was 58.8 kWh. I'm curious to see what the peak amount per day can be.

Stay tuned....

Parker survives an odd incident

It was back in early February...I was in my office working and Parker ran in and bounced onto his bed. He had just come in from the back yard, and was his usual happy self...and then I looked over and saw the gash on his nose! He had blood all over his face, but didn't seem to mind. OMG! What happened?

We never did discover what the cause was. We treated the wound at home with a mix of powdered sage and styptic powder. It formed a large covering like a scab over the wound. It wasn't pretty, but it stopped the bleeding and protected it.

After a week or so the powder began to flake off, and we began using warm compresses on the wound to help the remaining powder to wear off. Once it was gone, we used vitamin E oil to cover and soothe the area. Now, two months later the wound has healed and there's barely a scar to show. The fur is grown back, and he's as handsome as ever!

Hopefully we won't have anything like this again.

Production Numbers are UP!

We have crossed the 1 megawatt line in our production. This took just about one month. Today was the highest single day's production as well--over 53 kWh! We have a "bank" of over 110 kWh with the utility now. This will help in hot summer months when we are running all the air conditioning units. For now, it gets stored as credits on the account.