July 2011 PV Revenue Results

In my previous post I show that all but one day had very high PV generation for our system over July 2011. I don't complain about the one lower output day as we desperately needed the rain. On the 20 June 2011 we broke even since the winter where our cumulative revenue exceeded our cumulative loan payments. We had a very sunny June and we continued to add to our surplus so that by 1 July we started the month with $58.60 surplus. Don't forget, this is a surplus on a PV system that was over $31,000 and we had less than 2 more months to earn a little on our investment.
July was a very good month, adding to June's very strong output [and therefore revenue]. My chart below shows the cumulative revenue, loan payments, and microFIT payments we received.

Cumulative revenue, microFIT payments, and loan payments to 31 July 2011, 4.9 kW PV system.

We see the following:

• Revenue has exceeded loan payments by $341 by the end of July
• Return to date is 1.08% [profit over loan value]
• microFIT payments are a little irregular [number of days for each payment has been 49, 70, 68, 43, and 63]. I suspect that microFIT payments are manually processed at Guelph Hydro with "flexible" schedule
• Slope of cumulative revenue is greater during May-July vs. Aug-Nov [clearly showing the tendency of longer days in the summer, less cloud cover]. This trend should continue for the rest of the summer given the long range forecasts, though some rain is forecasted over next 2 weeks. 

I did do a boo-boo in some previous charts. I was showing earlier versions of the figure above with the microFIT payments including HST. The payments from Guelph Hydro includes HST. I must submit this to Revenue Canada so I incorrectly was including that tax as part of my revenue. The chart above is corrected and does not include HST. I shall talk about taxes in a forthcoming blog post.

Guelph Solar Blog

I wish to share my experience deciding to install a solar photovoltaic system on our house in Guelph, Ontario. We are contracted to sell our power through the Ontario Power Authority's microFIT program. We are now receiving $0.802/kWhr.

I will post why I decided to do this project, how I proceeded, and how it is working out. I will try to post information here that I think will be useful for others who wish to do solar PV, for people who want to learn more about it, and to hopefully encourage further development of solar PV in Guelph [and beyond].

Full disclosure: I am not a vendor of solar equipment or services. I will not be taking any money from anyone related to solar, etc. I am fully independent. I do work for the provincial government working in renewable energy, but not solar. I am approaching this as non-work related. I will avoid any opinion, just the facts [positive and negative]. I will disclose any conflicts of interest.
Despite a similar name, this blog is not associated in any way with SolarG nor Solar Guelph.