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Thursday, June 23, 2022

Welcome to Summer


Summer 2022 has officially arrived in the northern hemisphere! The June solstice was the kick-off and, since that's the longest day of the year, I like to mark the occasion by sharing our solar production. 

Solar Generation On June 21st, 2022

Here in the NW corner of Oregon, the sun rose at 5:23 AM and didn't set until 9:04 PM. That's 15 hours and 41 minutes of daylight. As the graph above shows, our PV system was cranking out power from 6 AM until 8 PM. We generated a total of 76.5 kWh of energy. 

Destinations of our Solar Production

As you can see, about one-third of the energy was used to run our home. The bulk of the remaining two-thirds was sent to the grid, running our meter backwards for most of the day. 

How Much? 

On this one day, we generated 76.5 kWh of energy; just for fun, let's look at this amount of energy in several ways. 

76.5 kWh of energy is equivalent to: 

  • 2.5 days of use in a typical US household
  • 203 Million foot-pounds
  • 261 BTUs 
  • 65822 food calories (about 132 meals)
  • 306 miles in a 2022 Tesla Model 3 standard range

Obviously, this energy cannot be converted directly into food calories or meals. I'm just trying to put some perspective on the number. 

The 306 miles in a Tesla is interesting and the energy can be directly used in an EV. Looking at fuel averages, a 306-mile trip would typically use about 15.3 gallons of gasoline. At current gas prices, that's about $76 dollars. Not a bad day's work. :) 


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