Only a year later, my solar system monitoring is live!

[mbcijim]

This is the commercial system that I own - 200KW. This is monitoring in real time.

The system's been active since September 7, 2010, but the monitoring only got installed in the last month or two so the data only goes back until the monitoring was installed. We just got the new internet connection working last week. Thankfully not all my projects go like that!

You guys will get a kick out of this:
http://live.deckmonitoring.com/?id=mbc_solar___bull_s_head

By the way, what a racket Deck Monitoring is - $5,000 for a 10 year contract for this.

 

[DiscoInferno]

That is a racket. Our monitoring was included (SolarCity lease), since they need it anyway. So how often do you check it? We're not even at the house with the panels right now, so being able to check it all the time over the internet is pretty cool. I can even tell the weather! It was just turned on a week ago, so it's still a new toy for me.

 

[mbcijim]

They probably charge a lower fee for a residential system.

What are you doing with your SREC's?

 

[DiscoInferno]

It's not Deck, I think SolarCity (the company who we lease the panels from) runs their own monitoring system. We have a 20 year lease on our panels (a 5.67kW system); since SolarCity actually owns them, they get all the tax goodies and SRECs. In return we get exclusive use for 20 years, a guarantee on production, monitoring and servicing, plus don't have to do any of the paperwork, for a lot less money up front. Presumably buying is the better deal in the long run, or else their business model has some serious flaws. But I didn't want to deal with the hassle.