Seasons changing in the right direction

The June Solstice arrived in New Zealand at 8:49pm this evening, and I’m celebrating that fact. The days will start to get longer beginning tomorrow, and, in 72 days, we’ll see Spring return. And, yes, I’m being seasonally consistent.

I’ve often talked about how in this part of the world we say a season begins on the first of the month (December, March, June, and September), and not on the solstices or equinoxes. However, those astronomical dates are very relevant to one particular thing: Hours of sunlight. For me, the related season is kind of beside the point.

Hours of sunshine dramatically affects how much I have to pay for electricity: The more sunshine, the less I pay, thanks to my solar panels. This is something I’ve talked about before, and especially about how the winter months (and the month either side) electricity generally costs me much more than in the summer months (and the month either side). That’s because the longer days of summer, combined with the higher aspect of the sun, means I generate much more electricity than in the shorter days with lower sun angle. The angle of the sun matters because in winter afternoon it dips behind neighbouring houses much earlier than in the summer months, making already short days even shorter for power generation.

I have a special device that prioritises my solar power going to the electric hot water heater if my panels are producing enough electricity. In the winter months the days are shorter and often overcast or rainy, and that means I may not generate enough power to heat the water. When that happens, I can push the “boost” (as it’s called) button on that special device to take electricity from the grid to power the hot water heater, which it does for an hour. I usually do that after 10pm, when the rates are lower.

Every winter I have a couple mornings or so in which my shower is, at best, quite warm, rather than hot in any sense, so I push the button. Recently, though, I had a couple family members staying with me for awhile, and because of the shorter, rainier days and three adults using hot water, I had to push the “boost” button several times. As always, I did that after 10pm, however, during a rainy spell I also hit the boost button in the evening, too, to give us a fighting change of having hot water for showers in the morning.

Had I been able to afford batteries when I had the panels installed, this possibly wouldn’t be a problem because I could use the stored power to heat the water, however, that still only applies of there’s enough sunshine to generate enough electricity to charge the batteries. So, I might still need to use that boost button, though possibly not as often.

I plan on looking into adding batteries, and also adding a few more panels, which, I think, should go on the roof toward the back of the house, which gets sunshine later into the afternoon, even in winter. We’ll see: None of that is cheap.

In the meantime, winter means that I use the boost button when necessary, and, whether I use it or not, I pay more for electricity. And that’s why I’m celebrating the June Solstice: As winter fades, sunlight hours increase, and so does my power generation, which, in turn, means my power bill will decrease, too. So, of course I celebrate the June Solstice!

The next of these events I’ll celebrate will be the arrival of Spring on September 1 (for me, one of only a few goods thing about that month…). The September Equinox will be on September 23 at 12:05pm NZST. We’ll see if I notice that, but I won’t be surprised if I ignore it.

The image of the sun in the photo up up top is from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (NASA ID: PIA26681). It was taken on September 10, 2025.

Opportunities for change

Every once in a while, I come across an interesting story in a very indirect way, and it’s even better when it’s a topic I’m both insterested in, and that’s also timely. Creating green hydrogen in Australia using some Kiwi can-do is just the sort of thing I might not expect, particularly when it came by way of Facebook.

The video up top is from Australia’s “A Current Affair” programme from Channel Nine. The specific segment, abuot producing hydrogen in Australian using solar power, came to my attention because of a Facebook post by “I Fucking Love Australia”, an unabashedly lefty Facebook Page that often talks about politics, including the dire affect the USA’s Felon in Chief has on the world. The post was also published on the “IFLOZ” Substack, and it was on Substack that I saw the video.

I was interested in this story because I’ve said for years that producing green hydrogen should be a major focus for New Zealand. “Green hydrogen” production is carbon neutral because it’s made from water using solar, wind, or hydro electricity. When produced from fossil fuels, it’s usually called “blue hydrogen”, unless it’s made from coal gasification, when it’s called “brown hydrogen” because it’s usually made from lignite, aka “brown”, coal.

As you may be aware, New Zealand is surrounded by water, and we have ample sources of hydro, geothermal, and, increasingly, grid-scale solar power. The story in the video is about using hydrogen to make fertiliser, but they mention making it to be used as fuel, too. When hydirgen is burned, its byproduct is water vapor, not deadly gasses like fossil fuels produce. If NZ fully commited to hydrogen, we could be self-sufficient in carbon-neutral fertiliser AND fuel for our vehicles, and no idiotic war on the other side of the planet could affect our fuel and fertiliser ever again.

Australia, because of its size and suitability for solar power, could become an exporter of fertiliser from green hydrogen, and help the world turn its collective backs on the volatile Middle East while also helping other countries reduce their carbon emissions. There are so many wins.

There’s one final twist in the path to this particular story. This evening I checked Facebook and saw a post from the IFLOZ Facebook Page saying they were going to concentrate on Substack, where most of their content will be by subscription. They’re doing this, they say, because Facebook has been de-emphasising content from the political left, and that results in declining ad revenue for the content creators, and they had charts to back that up. They also suggested that Facebook is doing it because their future plans will require consent from the current US regime, and so they’re basically turning down the volume of the Left in order to avoid problems with the regime. Whatever the specific reason, many left-of-centre content creators on Facebook have complained about suddenly declining page views, and so, revenue. I have no idea whether the speculations about the motivations are correct or not, but given the current regime’s constant posturing against the First Amendment to the USA’s Constitution, the speculation is at least plausible.

Still, it’s always nice to run across a topic I’m intertested in, no matter how roundabout the course may be. Apparently I won’t have a repeat of this particular path, though. There’ll be others.

I made more sunshine

Everyone knows that to make electricity, solar panels (often formally called “photovoltaic”, or “PV” panels) need to have daylight, ideally full sun. This is why solar panels don’t produce much electricity on cloudy days—and none at all at night. The number of daylight hours matters, too, which is why the panels make more electricity in the summer than in winter. And, of course, bright sunny days are the absolute best days for solar power. But, what if the amount of sunshine, whatever it is, is shielded? I just took steps to increase the amount of sunshine hitting my panels, and so, the amount of electricity they make.

Not for the first time, I learned about the existence of something through Facebook ads. In this case, it was about the importance of having solar panels cleaned in order to maximise the amount of electricity the panels create. Last week, I had a specialist company clean my panels, and yes, it was worth it.

The company also cleans large banks of panels for commercial operations, so I had confidence they knew what they were doing—though the reviews I checked were also all positive. They do a thorough check of the system, for example, making sure none of the glass is cracked, that the mounts are secure, and that the inverter (which converts the DC power from the panels into AC power used by the house or sent to the grid) is functioning properly.

The specific thing that caught my attention in the ads was about removing lichen—something I’d never considered. A few weeks ago, I looked at my panels and realised they had lichen growing on them, which is like little pads of shade all over the panels. I also noticed they were dirty.

At first, I thought about getting an extra long-handled washing brush, the type typically used for washing windows on upper floors while standing on the ground. I realised, though, that I’d probably still have to climb a ladder, something everyone in the family thought was a bad idea. Hiring someone was the alternative.

The Before and After photos up top are part of what I posted to social media, and the ones at the bottom of this post were taken by the person who cleaned the panels, looking down the roof toward the ground, an angle I’d never seen before. The whole process took a couple hours or so, and I didn’t need to be at home for them to do it.

And, yes, it was worth it.

I looked at the information my inverter logs to see of there was an obvious difference in electricity production, but I needed to figure out the best way to compare, given that this is Spring, and the weather is so changeable. So, I just looked at the four highest-production days before the cleaning and the four highest afterward—but not including the day they were cleaned—and averaged them for both periods. After cleaning, the panels were producing just under 20% more power than before they were cleaned, which is quite significant. Before the panels were cleaned, the highest production day made 26.30 kWh of electricity, and the highest after they were cleaned was 31.51 kWh.

The more power that’s generated, the bigger the potential financial benefit—obviously. I benefit mainly from getting free electricity to used in the daytime, and anything I don’t use is sent to the grid, earning me credits to reduce the amount I pay for electricity thre rest of the time. This is where the inverter stats became unreliable—but still interesting.

The inverter tracks all the electricity I produce, of course, and the software estimates my “savings”, which is an estimate of the amount of money I’ve saved from using the solar power myself and from the credit I get for the power I send to the grid. However, to be accurate, they need to use an accurate rate—called a “tariff”—to make the calculations, and I don’t know whether the rates are accurate or not. So, with that rather huge caveat, the estimate on the fourth post-cleaning day was that from the date the system went live three years ago until the fourth day after cleaning, my savings totalled $5,955.30, of which $1,121.57 was just for 2025 to that date (and October’s savings to that date were $87.53). While I doubt those numbers are accurate, if they were, it would mean that the savings have recovered nearly half of what I paid to install the system. Regardless, the free power I use on sunny days does save me a lot of money.

I clearly take all the information about savings with a huge grain of salt. I plan to try to work out how accurate their calculations are, but that’s a project for future me. In the meantime, I just think it’s interesting.

The bottom line—literally—is that keeping the panels clean means more electricity generated, and that, in turn, means more savings for me (whatever the amount is…). Most importantly, all this also means that I don’t “waste” any electricity I use in the daytime, which was really the main thing I wanted, because it achieves my goal of treading more lightly on the planet. Everybody wins—including the planet.

A good month begins

Welcome to August! This is a very exciting month because it’s the final month of winter, and that means spring and better weather is on the way. It’s been a challenging winter, one I’’l be glad to see go away.

It’s safe to say that complaining about bad winter weather is a behaviour I’m drawn to, primarily because because that weather that can be aggravating, annoying, or even just a massive inconvenience, and I no longer have much tolerance for that. I may not be able to do anything to change the weather, but at least I can still complain about it.

All that said, the weather really has been pretty disgusting this winter. Last month, I wrote about June’s weather, and I said in that post that the temperatures in Hamilton were more or less aligned with historical averages, but we’d had a lot of rain. In July, the avearge high temperature was slighly higher than the historical average, but—yet again!—the rain was significantly more than the historical average. Turns out, though, Hamilton got off lightly.

In July, parts of New Zealand received three or four times the average rainfall, leading TVNZ’s 1News publishing a detailedrport on it: ”What was behind New Zealand’s wet and windy July”. Worse. 1News meteorologist Dan Corbett said that the rain “would be returning — with a vengeance”, so,we should "keep that raincoat handy. There is going to be more wild weather coming." Oh, yay.

Apparently, we’re getting all this rain because the surface water in the Tasman Sea is much warmer than usual (and yes, that's related to climate change), and that means that ordinary rain storm systems passing over it draw up lots of that evaporating moisture and then dump it on New Zealand. That won’t last forever, of course.

Despite all the rainy weather, we still get sunny days, sometimes a few in a row. Today was a sunny day, for example, and I got three loads of washing done with free electricity, though I could only dry two of them (I dried the third load when the rates went down at 10pm—winter days have fewer hours of daylight, and that affects how much power the solar panels generate, and so, how much free electricity I can use).

This particularly rainy winter has given me a new pastime: Frequently checking the extended weather forecast so that I can plan things, like doing the washing and charging the batteries for the mower and line trimmer (as well as working out when I can use them). I actually think this sort of constructive planning is a good thing —usually? At any rate, it makes it possible to get things done even when the weather isn’t cooperatimg.

Yeah, sure, all of that, BUT, spring is now only a month away, and for me that’s a great reason to celebrate—unless spring and summer also throw up, so to speak, bad weather. If they do, though, I’ll plan around that, too. Maybe I’m more predictable than the weather?

2024 December Solstice

The December Solstice arrived in New Zealand at 10:20pm NZDT tonight, meaning that today was the longest day of the year—and they’ll now start getting shorter. There are people who feel that today is the first day of Southern Hemisphere summer, and because of that it’s also known as the start of astronomical summer. As I’ve said many times, though, I’m a meteorological season kind of guy, and noted the start of our summer, as I do, back on December 1. To me, the summer solstice is nearing the end of the first third of the season.

This weekend was predicted to be stormy, and this morning certainly was. Around midday, the rains were torrential, and the winds were surprisingly strong. And then it just faded away and later in the afternoon it became a beautiful sunny day with skies that were blue with puffy clouds. It was even a relatively pleasant 24 degrees (75.2F) today, which is not always the case this time of year.

I recently noticed something that I hadn’t before: In summer, I generate electricity even on cloudy days, sometimes enough to run a hungry appliance—like the dishwasher or the dyer—and still send power to the grid. In winter, a cloudy day usually means too little power is generated for that to be possible. This is probably because of axial tilt, which means the sun is facing the Southern Hemisphere, and that makes just enough difference that more light gets through this time of year.

I noticed this because I went into the garage recently and heard the inverter whirring away. That’s the device that takes the DC electricity from the solar panels, converts it to AC, and then sends that power first to my house, then anything surplus goes to the grid. When the sun is shining brightly in the afternoon, it can be rather loud, and since it’s mounted on the wall separating the garage from the kitchen, I can hear the inverter when I’m standing in the kitchen. The whirring isn’t even almost that loud on a cloudy summer day, but loud enough that I can hear it when I walk into the garage; it's even quieter on a cloudy winter day.

Another benefit of summer settling in is that lawns are definitely growing more slowly, and even starting to brown-off in spots, all of which happens in a typical summer. Speaking of which, I’m trying to not say “normal summer” any more because the weather has become much less predictable, and with severe storms more frequent, than used to be the case. Still, if this summer is becoming more like a typical summer, that’ll mean less mowing, and, to me, that’s a wonderful thing,

Even though I know that the days are now beginning to get shorter, it won’t be noticeable for at least a month, so I can ignore that pesky detail for now. I love summer the most, and I intend to enjoy this one.

Here’s the list of when the solstices and equinoxes arrive in New Zealand next year, provided by TimeAndDate.com:

March Equinox: 10:01pm NZDT on March 20, 2025. June Solstice: 2:42pm NZST on June 21, 2025. September Equinox: 6:19am NZST on September 23, 2025. December Solstice: 4:03pm NZDT on December 22, 2025

Related:

In New Zealand, Daylight Saving Time starts at 2am on the last Sunday in September, and ends at 3am on the first Sunday in April. This means that our current NZ Daylight Time (NZDT) ends at 3am on Sunday, April 6, 2025, and we resume NZ Standard Time (NZST). Then, at 2am on Sunday, September 28, 2025, NZDT returns again. In both cases, the dates and times are fairly easy to work out, unlike solstices and equinoxes.

I created the graphic above for a post in 2012. I used an image in the public domain and claim no ownership over that image, however, the composition is licensed under my usual Creative Commons license.

Winter woes grow

If there’s one topic I return to frequently, even if it’s only in a brief mention, it’s my lawnmowing adventures, yet I’ve said nothing about it in ages. It’s just another example of how this winter is progressing—in this case, both good and bad.

Back in July, I published ”Winter of my discontent”, a post in which I said something I can’t remember mentioning before—that I hate winter. I also listed some of the challenges that I’ve faced this year, and all of those are still true, but now there’s another to add to the list: Taking care of my lawns.

I took the photo up top early afternoon on August 1. It shows part of the “lawn” nearest my patio, and how the water was beaded up on the leaves. It’s like that many days in winter.

As I often mention, it rains a lot in winter in the upper North Island, and this year my part of the country is at or above normal rainfall for the season. What this means in practice is that the lawns never truly dry out, and that makes mowing a real challenge. As I said back on June 7:

Mowing… is much harder when there’s been rain, especially when the grass is long, because moisture stays close to the ground for a long time. That makes the lawn much denser than it is when dry, and that can stall the mower if I’m not careful. [emphasis in the original]

My battery-powered mower simply doesn’t have enough power to deal with dense, wet lawns, though some newer models (and other brands) of battery-powered mowers have less problem with that, and petrol-powered mowers manage it pretty well. The past two winters were both much milder, and so I tried to wait two days after rain to let the lawns dry out a bit, but in a winter with at least normal rainfall, like this year, that’s just not an option. There may be no more than one day—or merely part of one—with no rain, and that means the lawns never actually dry out.

This is one of the reasons that nearly two months passed since I last mowed the lawns, however, the other reason is a benefit of winter this year: It’s been cold, and the grass grows very slowly (if at all) when the temperature is low. We started getting very cold (freezing or below) nighttime temperatures back in May, which is unusual. Since then, even the daytime temperatures have often been quite cool or even cold, meaning slow-growing grass. That was a very good thing because it meant I didn’t need to mow the lawns as often as in milder weather—until I did.

By this month, the lawns were getting quite long, the back in particular (which is obvious to me in the photo), and the edges of both needed to be done, too. Tuesday of last week, I finally mowed the front lawn and side yard, including using the line trimmer on the edges. The next day, I finished the back lawn and edges.

There’s a reason I always do the side yard before the rest of the back lawn, especially in winter: I know there won’t be much charge left in the battery, and if I don’t finish the entire back lawn right away, I won’t see a half-done lawn when I look out the windows. An additional benefit is that the shorter grass makes it easier for me to get my rubbish and recycling wheelie bins out of the side yard.

There’s one more aspect to all this, one that is also worse in winter: The lawn mower’s battery itself. My mower’s manufacturer says to store batteries part-charged, which they say extends battery life. However, I’ve read elsewhere that doing that minimises the chance of thermal runaway, explosion, and fire that lithium batteries are notorious for. That’s not a big issue by itself, but it means that tight planning is essential because I need to charge the battery before I can use it, something I try to do using solar power, and daylight hours are short in winter. I managed, obviously.

Thursday of last week, the day after I finished the mowing, the rain returned, and it’s been rainy at least part of every day since. A major weather system moved through the area over the weekend and into today, dumping lots of rain, giving some strong winds, and today we even got some thunder. Still, we had a sunny morning today, so I was able to run my dishwasher using only solar power, something that helps to keep my higher winter power charges somewhat less than they’d otherwise be. Nevertheless, the cold and rainy weather continues to give me challenges (not even talking about comfort), and back in July I talked about what I do:

To cope with that, on the many days with no sunshine, I do power-hungry chores—like running the clothes dryer or dishwasher—after 10pm when the electricity rates are lowest. When I can, I wait until a sunny day to do those sorts of chores so I have free electricity, but that’s not always possible—especially when we have the better part of two weeks with nothing but cloudy or rainy days.

In that same post I mentioned pressing the “boost” button on the device that prioritises sending my solar electricity production (if any…) to the hot water cylinder, and how it was only the second time I’d ever had to do that. Since that July post, I’ve had to do that two more times—and almost did it for a fourth time last night, but didn’t (the sunny morning today made that unnecessary).

All of this added together—the huge amount of rainy, or at least cloudy, days this winter, plus the cold temperatures at night, have made this winter the worst I’ve experienced in years, and it’s definitely the worst I’ve experienced since I moved to Kirikiriroa-Hamilton. I struggled to get the lawns mowed, I needed to boost my hot water cylinder three times (so far…), and I’m often cold, especially in the evening.

Still, it’s not been all bad: That grass I struggled to mow grew more slowly because of the cold, and yesterday when I vacuumed the heat pump filters, they weren’t bad at all, which surprised me considering how much they’ve been running every day and night.

Winter’s been a very mixed bag this year (and more bad than good), but the hopeful thing is that in two weeks we’ll have just started Spring. I wouldn’t mind a warmer- and drier-than-usual Spring, but whatever it is, these winter woes are going to end—eventually. That’s a very good thing.

Winter of my discontent

I joke all the time about how I hate winter, but it’s actually true—when winter is being winter, in the usual sense for wherever I was living that season. Here in New Zealand, the news media and ordinary people alike have all talked about the past few winters with the word “unusually” preceding whatever they’re talking about: “unusually mild”, for example, though it could be cold, wet, dry, or anything else. While there could be faulty memories involved sometimes (as in, “winter was never live this when I was a kid”), it’s also true that records of all sorts are falling all over the planet.

Take the gross weather, stir in things going on in my own life, add the short days, and for me this winter has been particularly awful. All the things I hate about winters in this part of New Zealand—cold, rain, and days in which it doesn’t rain, but that remain dark and dreary, anyway—have been present more days than not.

To be sure, it’s not dark and/or rainy every single day—there have been some beautiful days, too. It also hasn’t been below freezing every night (though it has been on far too many nights…), and some daytime temperatures have been quite pleasant. However, taken as a whole, winter this year has been pretty awful—in my opinion, of course.

I took the photo up top on a very foggy night last Thursday, when I took the recycling to the kerb for collection the next morning. However, I didn’t share it anywhere because I didn’t think it showed the fogginess well enough. Leo and I then went bed, and a few hours later, at 2.40am, he woke me up to let him outside, and I sleepily ambled into the lounge, slid open the door to the patio—and saw that the fog was completely gone. Kirikiriroa-Hamilton is legendary for having heavy fog in winter, especially in the morning, and after I snapped the photo I just assumed it would thicken. Instead, I think it may have rained between the time we went to bed and when I noticed the fog was gone, and the temperature may have changed, but whatever it was, I was definitely surprised.

Fog isn’t normally that much of a problem for me: I think that since I’ve moved to Hamilton I’ve only had to drive in fog a couple times—once once in the morning when I went to a medical appointment of some sort, and once at night after a family get-together. The truth is, winter weather phenomena like fog or frosts don’t actually affect me. It’s cold and sunlight.

The trouble with cold is that my house is mostly unheated: Only the living area and my bedroom have a heat pump air conditioner, which means that the other two bedrooms (one of which is my office) and the hallway can feel pretty cold, especially at night. To cope, I add another layer of clothing, and I shut the doors of unheated rooms—the guest room, the toilet (room, not throne), the bathroom, and, when I go to bed, the en suite attached to my bedroom. I also close the door between the living area and the hallway until there’s just enough room for Leo to get through in the morning (he loves running down the hallway to the kitchen).

Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about the amount of sunshine or the length of the days, so I have to rely on other things to cope with those problems.

My solar power system reduces the amount of electricity I need to buy, dramatically in the summer months, and slightly in the winter. The problem with winter is, first, the days are short, and second, it rains so very much, or at least is overcast, that I don’t generate much electricity in the winter months.

To cope with that, on the many days with no sunshine, I do power-hungry chores—like running the clothes dryer or dishwasher—after 10pm when the electricity rates are lowest. When I can, I wait until a sunny day to do those sorts of chores so I have free electricity, but that’s not always possible—especially when we have the better part of two weeks with nothing but cloudy or rainy days.

And then there’s the potential problem with hot water.

I have a special device installed that diverts solar electricity to my hot water cylinder before sending it to the power grid, meaning that, basically, I have a solar hot water heater. The problem is that the solar panels have to produce enough electricity to heat the water. When we have several days in a row of cloudy skies, especially if some of those daylight hours are storms, and especially if we have nighttime temperatures around or below freezing, it can mean my water never heats properly, though it’s rare for the drop to be noticeable—in fact, the second time it happened was this week.

I had my shower Saturday morning, and noticed that the water temperature was barely lukewarm. I turned the knob toward hotter, and it was warm enough, though it could’ve been better. The thing is, the en suite is at one end of the house, and the hot water can take forever to get there in winter, so I needed to test it—maybe I just had to wait?

A little while latter, I hand washed a couple dishes in the kitchen sink, and even turned to all the way hot, it wasn’t very hot. Time for my back-up plan: I went into the garage and tapped the “Boost” button on the controller to use mains power electricity to head the hot water for one hour (at the time, the panel on the device said something like that it was “waiting for surplus power”. This is an expensive way to heat water (hot water cylinders are normally on a special circuit at a reduced rate), but, as the saying goes, needs must.

The only other time I’ve needed to do that was the first winter after the controller device was installed. In fact, there was some sunshine Saturday, and again Sunday and today, so the hot water is back to normal. Hopefully, the weather will be more favourable for power and hot water for the rest of winter—something I say with no rational reason for doing so.

There’s not much I can do to change all that at the moment, however, if I stay in this house long-term, I’ll change the heating so that all the bedrooms are heated/cooled, and I’ll work to get the hot water less reliant on sunshine. Right now, though, my strategies for coping with winter weather are pretty much working. Even though I can’t always say I’m comfortable, I nevertheless have it better than many, and far better than some. Still, it does seem kind of pointless to have to cope with cold temperatures and lack of sunshine without the pay-off of snow—is something I’d never actually say.

By the way, have I ever mentioned how much I hate winter? No? Well, here’s a bonus photo: The moon amid the clouds around 3am Saturday night/Sunday morning, after Leo got me get out of bed. Again.

Sunshine and feathers

Three years ago today, my solar power system was installed, and just yesterday I talked about how that relates to seasonal clock changes. Today I took advantage of the free electricity harvested from the sun’s rays, and that led to something else entirely.

This morning, I mowed the lawns and when I was done, I started recharging the battery using free electricity from the solar panels. As I’ve written about before, using a no-emissions lawnmower, powered by solar power, was exactly what I always wanted, and while Nigel wasn’t keen on me mowing the lawns at our last house, that, too, was actually part of my dream.

While I was at it, I did a load of washing, and dried it in the dryer. I also handwashed some dishes I don’t put in the dishwasher, because my hot water cylinder only gets electricity when the sun is shining.

All of my activities today, then, were the sorts of things I was talking about yesterday. I can’t say I was exactly enthusiastic about the mowing this morning, but it was a few days overdue, and there may be rainy weather coming—in short, it had to be today. And that’s when things went in an unexpected direction.

While I was mowing out front, I saw a feather (in the photo up top) blowing toward my car, then, a little while later, it was laying on the grass a few metres from where I first saw it, in a patch of lawn I'd finished only a few minutes earlier. I was struck by this because some people believe that birds that fly or land unusually close to us are visitations from loved ones who’ve died, which I neither believe nor reject: I have absolutely no way of knowing either way.

I was also thinking, though, that if the belief was true, and if Nigel—the person who knew me better than anyone else in my life—wanted to visit me, he’d know I wouldn’t notice a bird, and he’d also know that I always notice a loose feather suddenly showing up somewhere unexpected, In fact, I wrote about finding a feather in July of last year. I now have a mini-collection of four feathers I’ve found on my lawns, one of which is that one from last year, the other three from this year.

Rationally, I’m well aware that it’s likely that the feather was just a feather that just happened to show up while I was mowing the lawns. Even so, I like to think that, however improbable it may be, it could be something more.

At any rate, that made the mowing a little better of an experience than it often is, and that, along with the fact that I still noticing such things at all, is enough for me. But if there really is any sort of communication from beyond death, it sure would be quite helpful if it was a bit more obvious. Still, feathers are nice to find, I think.

Seasonal time management

It’s time for me to start adjusting my household routines to compensate for the changing seasons, specifically, the shortening days and cooling temperatures. Those changes are mostly slow and not even necessarily easy to perceive—until April arrives. Last night, New Zealand went back to Standard Time (NZST) when we turned our clocks back one hour. That abrupt change in daylight hours is the signal for me to change the way I do things.

Much as I despise winter—something I may have mentioned once or twice—the thing I now despise even more are the two seasonal clock changes, and of the two, the Autumn change is the worst, which is weird to me. I didn’t always despise the clock changes: When I was younger, including after I moved to New Zealand, I was pretty much indifferent—though I often said I enjoyed the “extra hour of sleep” after the autumn clock change. I’ve read that dislike of the clock changes often becomes stronger as people get older, and maybe that’s part of it for me, too. However, the biggest thing for me is the declining number of daily sunshine hours.

As we move toward winter, the earth’s axial tilt causes us to slowly lose daylight hours, and the poor weather in winter can reduce the number of hours when there’s full sunshine. This is a very important thing for me, living in a house with solar power.

For roughly six months of the year—from late Autumn through early Spring—I plan my activities around the times when the sun is shining on the panels. That’s because I always try to use the power I’m generating rather than buying it. When there are already fewer sunshine hours in winter, rainy days can mean the panels may generate little or no electricity. My back-up plan is to do energy-intensive things (like running the clothes dryer or the dishwasher) when the electricity rates go down at 10pm.

This also affects heating when the temperatures descend to winter cold because my heat pumps use more power. On bright sunny days, I make sure the curtains are open when the sun is shining so the house can be warmed for free (the sunshine creates the electricity to run the heat pumps, and it also warms the inside of the house by shining though the windows). Then, when the sun leaves those windows, I close the curtains again to keep the heat inside. This curtain management is something I’ve done for many, many years, but I have an even stronger incentive now that the solar panels will be generating less power over the next few months.

None of this is terribly important for the other six months of the year: I generate so much electricity that I couldn’t possibly use it all. Even so, on hot summer days, I close the curtains on the westerly side of the house once the sun hits the glass. Doing that helps keep my house cooler than if I left the curtains open until evening.

Aside from all those very specific adjustments, I intensely dislike the short days of winter for another reason: Yard work. Over that season, I have to plan my outside work around the fewer hours of daylight—there’s no mowing my lawns on a winter evening, for example. However, the higher number of rainy days, on top of fewer sunlight hours, can add another barrier toward finishing yard work.

All of this may sound like I’m complaining, that I’m annoyed by all this, but that’s the opposite of the truth. In fact, I quite like the challenge of managing all of that, and I feel that mixing up my household routines as the seasons change helps to keep me from getting bored—or, maybe too bored os more accurate—with routine work around the house.

To be clear, I still hate short, cold, dark, and/or rainy winter days, but by making seasonal adjustments to my household routines I distract myself from what I dislike by instead focusing on what I can achieve in a day. I absolutely still hate winter, but focusing on positive things helps me to mind winter a little bit less. I’m sure that this sort of shift in focus wouldn’t necessarily work for everyone, but it definitely works for me. One does what one must, and all that.

Due to the time change, stoday’s unset will be a 6:02pm—and it’ll suddenly get dark an hour earlier that it has been. That’s a noticeable thing, and the seasonal clock changes mess with my body for a week or two, as well. My change in routine doesn’t help with that, unfortunately, but at least it helps me make sure I get stuff done. That’s—well, something I guess.

Productive start to the week

Weekends are when many people take care of all sorts of chores they don’t get to during the week. Even I do that, despite, technically, having unlimited time. In my case, though, the timing of projects is often determined by the weather.

I’ve needed to mow the lawns for several days because all the rain and mild weather we’ve had lately caused a growth spurt, something that was true before my previous mowing adventures two weeks earlier. Unfortunately, that same rain also made it just as difficult difficult to find the right right opportunity this week.

This past Monday was the day I was determined to do it, but first there was a different projects I needed to to do: I once again had to clean out the weeds from The Damn Raingarden. In the near year since I first wrote about doing that, I’ve had to clear it our a few times, and when I do a normal mini-clear out, I toss the weeds onto the lawn so the lawnmower can grind it up into mulch. There was rather a lot this time.

The mowing when very slowly because the grass clippings being mulched by the mower had trouble getting back out when the grass underneath was so long. I had to frequently stop and raise the mower up so it could spit out all the tiny clippings more easily. Even then I nearly stalled the mower a few times.

Once I was done with the front, I mowed the part of the side yard where I keep my wheelie bins for rubbish and recycling so they’d be easier to roll out. I did that because it looked for a time like it might rain, and I wanted to be sure I got that done in case I didn’t get to finish the mowing.

Back inside, I put the battery on to charge—once it cooled down, something I needed to do, too. Once the battery was re-charged, I headed back out, rolling the mower to the patio. I decided to start with the parts of the lawn I can see from the living areas of the house, because I remembered that last time the battery ran out of charge before I could finish.

I reached my first goal, and the mower was fine, so I mowed more, until the views out my bedroom windows would also be over mown lawn. The mower kept going, so I did, too, and I managed to finish mowing the entire back lawn on one charge—as it always used to be. Along the way, I noticed a small wasp nest on my fence (photo up top), and I removed it. I don’t know if it had been abandoned or if it was just too new to be occupied, but either way, it’s now gone (the wasp species is an invasive and fairly aggressive foreign species, btw).

It was a productive day, clearly, because I closed all three rings on my watch by the time I was done. This usually happens on days when I mow the lawns, so I was expecting it. I’m always glad when it does, because it’s not all that often that I close all three.

Later that evening, I was sitting and watching TV when my watch tapped me on the wrist to tell me I’d hit 200% of my Move Goal for the day, something that’s far more rare than closing all three. The Move Ring (the red one) records an approximation of kilojoules consumed by activity of any kind, especially movement. The user sets the Move Goal every Monday, and mine is set kind of low so I have a fighting chance of closing it every day. The alert made me smile—because I thought it was funny that it happened when I was sitting and watching TV.

I did all this despite being dog tired, so to speak. At some ungodly hour yesterday morning, someone we’ll call “Leo” (for no particular reason…), decided he wanted to go outside to go to the toilet. That ended my sleep—and yet I still managed to get all that outside stuff done (maybe it was the caffeine?). I assumed that I’d probably fall asleep in my chair while watching TV that evening, but I didn’t.

I was kind of puzzled by this: The whole mowing thing had gone better than two weeks earlier, but for the machine and for me. And then I remembered that last time I used the line trimmer on all the edges, and that’s probably what exhausted me personally. I also knew I should’ve done that this week, too, and if I had, I probably would’ve fallen asleep in my chair.

Today I washed and dried tow loads, and I also ran the dishwasher. This is relevant because they, too, were because of the sunshine: I used the free electricity from the sun do run those machines. Unlike the mowing, however, it’s at least possible to do those chores in the midst of rainy weather.

This week, then has gotten off to a productive start. I have some deliveries coming this week, a podcast to record, and maybe even some more projects to get done. Was this week’s start the trend or an anomaly? I’ll know in a few more days.

A good day, high and low

Today was a good day. It began with a balloon, veered into religion, or not, and then into physical labour. But it all started with clear blue skies.

This morning was absolutely brilliant, and the sunshine was streaming in the front windows as I sipped my first coffee. I looked outside, as I often do, and saw a hot air balloon hanging in the sky over the neighbourhood (photo above). When I shared in on Instagram/Facebook I said:

Not every day you see a hot air balloon over the neighbourhood in September. That’s usually in March.

I was (obliquely) referring to the annual “Balloons over Waikato” festival (next year’s will be held 19-24 March, 2024). At that time of year, it’s not even remotely unusual to see hot air balloons flying around—though it’s usually earlier in the morning. This time of year, it really is a little unusual.

I’d just posted the photo when I saw a nicely dressed middle-aged man and woman walking along the footpath and then toward my house. Leo thoughtfully alerted me, even though I’d seen them. It turned out they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, who proselytise in the neighbourhood a time or two each year.

I’m always pleasant to them (no surprise, that…), but I also hold my own (pleasantly) in such discussions. I absolutely don’t care what other people believe—as long as they don’t use their religion to control other people. I also get that proselytising is a part of some religions, but I still think it’s kind of pointless. I mean, I’m still a heathen despite many, many attempts at proselytising by various religionists. Even so, I’m always nice to them (though I sometimes have to be brief if I’m in the middle of something).

As a long-time student of communication and political marketing, I thought their method was really interesting: They began asking about the upcoming election, which was actually a springboard to them to talk about their belief in what they called a “heavenly government”, and how it was the only thing that could actually solve problems like poverty and climate change. One of them asked me if the government we elect next month will solve such problems. I said, “Will it? No. Could it? Absolutely.” And that right there is the heart of our irreconcilable differences.

They were also really good at listening to pushback and gently turning it back around to what they were selling—sorry, sharing—without getting lost in the weeds. They clearly were well-trained and, I have no doubt, sincerely believed what they were saying. Unfortunately for them, there was no way I was buying what they were selling—sorry, sharing.

After they left—after maybe 15 minutes?—I carried on with my chores. I had three loads of washing to get through today in order to take advantage of the sunshine. I also had one more project to begin: The re-boot of my efforts to civilise the bank along the side of my property.

Yesterday, I picked up some some stuff for Leo, and the pet store is near a small, independently-owned garden centre I’ve been to a few times, though I’ve never bought anything there. I ended up buying some native plants to put along the fence-line, something I originally tried to start a couple years ago. The plan was to plant them today.

While I’ll talk about the project in more detail later on (with photos), the important part for today is that I didn’t realise how hard it would be to remove the clumps of grass that have grown on the bank near the patio, the first place I wanted to plant the new arrivals. I didn't even start to clear that area last year, so it's even worse now. I soon realised that I started too late in the day to finish the task, so my revised plan is to plant them all tomorrow—something I’m mentioning now in the hope it’ll motivate me to actually do it.

Still, we had beautiful blue skies today, with 19 degree (66F) temperatures, I got my laundry done, and I saw a big balloon flying about. Sure, god-botherers (as we call them) can be annoying, but today’s visit was a very friendly and civil encounter. All things considered, a very good day, indeed. At all levels.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 393 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 393, “Movable barrier”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

Powering ahead—for now

I recently received my first electricity bill from the company I switched to back in June, and the results were… surprising. Technically, the pricing was comparable but, without any savings. It could be that I made a mistake.

To be able to compare like for like, I took the number of kilowatt hours (kWh) I was billed for and then took the rate my former company charged to see approximately how much my bill would have been had I not switched. The result was a surprise: The subtotal I was billed was actually around $40 higher than the former company would’ve charged me. However, that amount was reduced by the credit for solar production (higher than the former company would’ve paid) and a special promotional credit for my solar power (that credit expires after 12 months). That and pre-purchasing power at a discounted rate meant he amount I was actually billed was lower than it would’ve been under the old company—technically.

The main reason my new bill was higher was because of what they call the “fixed charge” (also known as a “daily charge”), which is a fixed amount suppliers charge every day. My new provider charges me $2.45 per day, while the former company charged me a mere 90¢ per day (and that was an increase from the 60¢ per day they used to charge me). That’s charged every single day, even if I don’t use a single kWh of electricity (I sarcastically joke that it’s a charge for the privilege of buying power from a company, but it’s actually about maintaining the lines network—apparently). The fixed charge accounted for a third of what I was billed this month and—let me repeat this—it had absolutely nothing to do with my actual power consumption.

While I saved a bit of money by pre-purchasing power at a discounted rate, I felt it was a bit of a hassle—enough to save a few dollars a month? I’m not sure.

On the other hand, the fact that the new company has differential pricing based on time of day means I can plan to use electricity I have to purchase when it’s cheaper. Here’s an actual example: Yesterday, I washed my duvet cover set, and those things are always difficult to get dry—they turn into a ball, often swallow their pillow cases, and generally take extra time (and work) to get dried. I knew it would take a couple times through the dryer to get it fully dry, but there wouldn’t be enough sunshine hours left in the day to dry the duvet using solar power. So, I turned the dryer back on after 10pm, when the power dropped to the lowest charge, their “night rate”. That meant my dryer was cheaper to run than if I’d used it in the evening. Could it turn out that I save money as I get better at managing the power I buy? Maybe? And, do I really want to have to micromanage when I use what electrical devices? Probably not.

Also, the device that regulates the power sent to my hot water cylinder switches on at 6am every morning to use purchased electricity to heat up my water in case I want to take a shower before the solar power is available to heat the water (which is very important in winter because hot water may not be actually hot until late morning or early afternoon). This is also on the cheaper night rate, so that now costs me less than it did with the former company. It’s not enough saved to cancel out the higher fixed charges, but could that, and managing my power use for cheaper times of the day, help cut the amount of power I have to buy enough to make up for other charges? I’m not sure.

My winter power bills are always dramatically higher than in summer because I generate so much more power in the summer. So, looking at it over a year’s time, it could be that, averaged out over an entire year I might still save money—but, to be totally honest, I’m very sceptical that will be the case, especially when the promotional credit expires. This past month I purchased a somewhat smaller amount of power to what I bought this time last year, and the bill was higher. That’s not encouraging.

Even so, I’m going to stick with it for now to see how it goes. While it currently doesn’t appear to have been a good move to switch to this company, it’s certainly possible that things could even out. Still, I have questions, but, for now, I have a somewhat open mind about it all.

All things considered, I think the best idea is to resume researching my options, even as I watch what happens with the company I switched to. Clearly this story isn’t yet finished.

Draining my energy

Over the past few days, I had to use a surprising amount of my energy to deal with a bit of household management. As is so often the case, there’s quite a bit more to that story, one that began with me feeling bad about myself, until I didn’t anymore, and then got a resolution—for now, anyway.

The end of the story is that I just changed electricity suppliers, but the story begins back the beginning: When I had the solar power system installed, they had a special deal in which I was offered a two year contract with a company called TrustPower, and that’d give me pretty much double the buy-back credit for the excess power I send to the grid. I was with a company called Mercury Energy, but their buy-back rate was among the lowest in New Zealand.

Late last year, I got an email telling me that they were slightly increasing the amount of the buy-back credit until the end of my contract. Then, earlier this year, TrustPower sold their retail business to—ahem—Mercury Energy. I was assured that the rates, terms and conditions I had would remain the same.

This past Friday, I received the first bill since the branding was changed to Mercury. I didn’t notice the email until Saturday evening, and when I read the invoice, I noticed the rate for the buy-back credit was less than half what it had been: 47.225% of the credit I had been getting. Approximately.

I next looked at the previous month’s invoice, and it was also at the lower rate. So was April’s. And March’s. February was the last month I got the full amount. All of which I worked out as Saturday got later.

I was quite upset by this: How could I have missed that change?! Did I get some sort of notification and missed it? Did I not get a notification I should’ve? Or, was I just stupid? At first I blamed my chronic lack of focus—until I remembered that for several months I hadn’t looked beyond the total amount I was being billed—and not at my May bill at all.

Now obsessed with this, I went to my computer and went to Powerswitch, a non-profit site that helps Kiwis find the best electricity provider based on their actual use. It was good, and offered ranked possibilities for me, however, the site didn’t take solar production into account, although they did have listings of rates for various companies’ buy-back credits, and a thumbnail of the restrictions. It turned out that the new rate I’ve been getting over these past four bills was among the lowest in New Zealand—but half a cent above what Mercury normally pays: I really was getting the same amount I had been under TrustPower.

Next, I went to the various websites of the companies that offered the highest buy-back credits, and read up on the terms and conditions. I found out that this sort of research is a very deep rabbit hole, and before I knew it, it was 3am, and my head was mush. I went to bed.

On Sunday morning, I was still trying to figure out how the rate had changed without me knowing it was going to happen. I went back a re-read the emails I’d received, and none of them said anything about the secondary rate going away. But then I yet again re-read the email from late last year and finally saw the part I’d missed ever since: The rate was “for the rest of your agreement”, and that ended with February’s bill. When I first read that email, and up until the last time I re-read it, I just absorbed that the rate was continuing and I completely missed the mention of an end point.

I then made a spreadsheet (of course I did…) to compare the top contenders with what I have now. I had to look at/compare how much the company charges per kilowatt hour (kWh), and how much their buy-back rate of credit is per kWh of solar power sent to the grid. I completely ignored the results from Powerswitch and evaluated the companies with the best buy-back rates.

The best rate—slightly higher than TrustPower originally offered—was with a contract, but one lasting five years. I felt that was a bit risky: It would expire just before I’m 70, and I don’t know how finances will go once I’m on the pension. More importantly, probably, I don’t know where I want to live in five years, and there would be costs to breaking the contract. I decided a 5-year contract wasn’t a good idea—but maybe their 2-year one would be okay? My spreadsheet told me that even with higher rates to pay and lower buy-back credit I’d still save money.

The next morning, Tuesday, I suddenly realised that my entire spreadsheet was completely wrong because I’d forgotten to include one very important thing: The “daily charge”, a fixed charge per day each company charges. For the companies I was considering, that ranged from 30 cents per day to several dollars per day. Not including that was a huge mistake.

I then added the companies Powerswitch had recommended, and also the daily charges for each company. It turned out that, taking into account their daily charges and the rates they charge for power I buy, the company with the 5-year contract would end up being MORE expensive than Mercury was.

In the end, the company I went with was actually the one Powerswitch suggested in the first place, Powershop. They had the second-highest buy-back rates in New Zealand, but the rates that they charge me vary by time of day—highest at peak (7am to 9:30am, and 5:30pm to 8:30pm), lower at off-peak, and lowest overnight (10pm to 7am). Very few power companies offer differential pricing, and at least one that does has uncompetitive rates. I already have a “smart meter” to track power I take from the grid and send to it, and it can already handle tracking my usage in real time. This means I’ll be charged different rates for the power I buy depending on the time of day, and not a flat rate no matter the time of day, like it’s always been ever since I moved to New Zealand. Makes me feel all modern and stuff.

There’s one more unique thing about the company I chose: The sell packages of power at varying rates, but usually less than what my total daily charges would otherwise be. In essence, this is like pre-paying for power, but at a lower rate. More interesting, they offer blocks of power months from now, often at deeply discounted rates—and with bigger discounts the farther in the future it is. In essence, they’re selling the consumer equivalent of electricity futures, a contract to buy future electricity at a set price, something that only electricity retailers take advantage of to, hopefully, lock in profits on the electricity they sell later on. In my case, I can lock in lower prices and pay less for power when I use more—like winter, for example.

In theory, this should allow me to have cheaper power bills by buying packages at lower rates, and even those “futures”, so to speak. However, if it ends up being too much work or the savings too little, there’s no contract and I can change again at any time.

I have to admit that this totally different way of doing things intrigues me, and I’m interested to see how it works for me. I can also say with absolute certainty that this is the first time I’ve ever been interested in how an electricity company does things. Times change?

It took a lot of my energy to get to this point, but I now have a new electricity provider. I’d still like a bit more sun, though.

Most important meal

They say that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I’ve always been kind of indifferent to it (except when I’m particularly hungry), but today was a good day to get a good start. It was a very busy day, after a very busy weekend.

When I shared the photo up top on my personal Facebook, I said:

"Today’s breakfast: A couple scrambled eggs on a piece of toasted breadmaker bread I made yesterday, topped with some freshly ground S&P and a bit of dried dill. First load of washing in the machine, with a couple more to follow. And sometime this week I hope—fingers crossed!—to be able to share some great news that will “change everything”, as they say, about my daily life AND my complicated relationship with Hamilton!"

I was in a rush to get loads of washing washed and, hopefully, dried before the clouds rolled in. That actually happened around 3pm, and by that time the second load was in the dryer and the third was still washing. That was already cutting it close, but then the third load went into the dryer around 3:40, and the skies darkened by 4:30, then darkened some more until it became like nighttime at 4:40 (roughly 40 minutes before sunset, 40 minutes before the dryer would be done) and the clouds opened up. Yet again. The arrival of the clouds ensured that the last hour of drying time would use bought electricity. C’est la vie, and all that.

The thing is, it’s winter, and there are fewer daylight hours every day, and few days when the sun is shining all day long. So, even on a fully sunny winter day, it’s often a struggle to wash and dry three loads using solar power, and I knew that today was supposed to be sunny only until afternoon. That’s the reason I had an early start today.

Doing laundry also means folding it and putting it all away—which, come to think of it, is a good argument against ever attempting three loads in one day. Add to that the fact that today was sheet-changing day (a lot of work in itself), and I knew I’d be busy. So, I ordered a supermarket delivery to save me some time, which indireclty relates back to the original caption for the photo up top, as will be clear soon. Of course, that wasn’t the only food adventure today: Late this morning I also had the delivery of avocados and lemons I ordered direct from the grower.

As if all that weren’t enough, I tidied up my electronic files of receipts and statements, which was “a bit delayed”, as such things often are. The job’s done now, though. And, of course, this follows a similarly busy weekend. It’s almost as if I’m domesticated or something.

And it all began with that scrambled eggs on toast. It’s the most important meal of the day, you know. That’s what they say.

Dark sunless hours

The video above was on 1News last night, and I can verify that we’ve had fewer “bright sunshine hours” in Hamilton so far this year than we had over the same period last year. I know that because more solar electricity production has been lower than last year, and that’s a direct result of less sunshine. In fact, a couple months ago, a published a post with charts that showed how I basically made no electricity during the Anniversary Weekend storms and Cyclone Gabrielle (charts near at the bottom of the linked post).

I was really glad to see that they were predicting a dryer winter this year—I haven’t been able to do much outside work so far this year, so maybe I can get caught up over winter?

There’s one other thing about the report, though: until today, I always thought the opposite of El Niño was La Nina, not La Niña. It’s possible that NZ broadcasters got it wrong in the past and, since I don’t speak Spanish, I didn’t know (I Googled it to find out).

Learning stuff is good. Right now, I think that drier weather is even better.

Two years with a dream fulfilled

Of all the things I’ve done since Nigel died, the thing I’m happiest about is having had a solar power system installed at my house, which happened two years ago yesterday (the photo above is from that post two years ago). It was about fulfilling a dream Nigel and I shared in a way I could do it without him, but it turned out it’s also saved me money: My power bills over a year are less than half of what they’d be without the solar power system, and much less than that in summer. When I blogged about this two years ago, I said, “This will matter a lot when I retire.” I read recently that there’s a bit of a boom in NZ with people doing this, as I did. as they near retirement, and for the reason I mentioned two years ago. I’m a trendsetter!

Over the past two years I’ve learned to manage my power use to maximise return on investment, and although that was never a consideration when I had the system installed, it sure is nice. I mentioned above that my annual power bills are less than half of what they’d be without the system, and that doesn’t sound like much, right? That’s only a part of the story: By maximising my use of power in the daytime, when my electricity is free, there’s a whole lot of electricity I don’t have to buy, and that’s actually worth much more than half my bill.

My actual savings are far more than half because the credits I get for the power I generate are far less than what I pay to buy electricity, and so, it makes sense for me to use the power I generate. All of which means that, depending on the time of year and weather, my electricity charges are actually at *most* a third of what they’d be otherwise, something I know because I made spreadsheets to track all this in detail (and I’ll soon have the data even more precise—still working on that).

So, two years ago yeterday I realised a dream Nigel and I shared in the only way I could do it without him, something that aligned with the values we shared. That’s more than enough, of course, but it turned out to be a wise financial decision, too. It’s no wonder I’m happy with it.

The power of summer

Summer has a lot going for it—in a normal year. One of the many things I like about the season is that (in a normal year) my solar panels generate a lot of electricity, but was that dramatically different this year? Naturally, I had to look at the numbers to see what happened in this year's non-normal summer. That took a lot longer, and a lot more work, than I expected.

I’ve been working on this post for the past three weeks, each version different from the one before. It began because I wanted to see how the storms in January and February affected my power generation, but then I wanted to to know, precisely how well the system was helping me meet my only goal, namely, to tread a little more lightly on the planet and to live a little more self-sufficiently, as Nigel and always dreamed of doing. I think I finally figured out how to explain it.

It turned out to be difficult to work out the clearest and most accurate way to talk about how the solar panels perform. After several attempts, I finally worked out that I need to be able to answer these questions:

1. How much electricity is created by the panels?
2. How much of that electricity do I use myself? and so,
3. How much power is sent to the grid?
4. How does the production affect my power bills—how much electricity do I still have to buy?

The chart at the top of this post answers the first three questions for the first two summers the panels were in operation (the system was installed and switched on after Summer 2020/21 was over; in New Zealand, summer is from December 1 to March 1). The chart shows the results for each month of those summers, and the total amounts for the seasons.

Next, let’s look at how much electricity I purchased for all three summers I’ve lived in this house:

This chart shows how much electricity I was billed for in kilowatt hours (kWh). There’s an important caveat here: The billing period is from the third week to the third week of every month. That means that the bills for each summer month were actually for the period from the third week of November to the third week of February. Moreover, the meter reading wasn’t necessarily taken on the same day. Meanwhile, the data on my production is for calendar months. So, there isn’t a perfect alignment between the data for my generation and for what I was billed for. To get that, I’d have to put the daily data in a spreadsheet and then match it up more precisely with the billed periods.

Even if I did that, there’d still be one more problem: There’s a mismatch between how many kWh of electricity the power company credits for having been supplied to the grid by the panels, and how much the system records as having been sent to the grid, and that can be for more OR less electricity than my system says it sent. I have absolutely no idea why the numbers don’t match up.

All of that maters for the next chart, which ties to work out approximately how much total power was used at my house over the past two summers (with 2020/21 shown to compare months):

Putting aside the imperfect match between monthly periods of time, what this shows is that my approximate total power consumption—the solar power I used myself combined with what I bought—is actually higher than it was before the panels were installed. Despite that, what I actually paid less than I did before the panels were installed.

The lower bills are because of a simple fact: Every solar power kWh that I used myself is a kWh I’d have to buy if I didn’t have the panels. It’s not just that the power I used was free (thought it is), it’s that the price I pay to buy electricity is higher than the credit I receive for power I send to the grid. For both those reasons, it makes sense for me to use as much of the power I generate as I can. As I’ve talked about before, I do power-hungry things—laundry, running the dishwasher, even charging batteries—in the daytime. I also can run my heat pumps 24/7 to keep my house at a constant temperature and still pay less than I did during my first summer, before the system was installed.

Overall, the data shows that over summer I’m buying a bit more than half as much electricity as I did before the panels went online—in fact, in that first, pre-solar power summer, I bought nearly twice as much power as I did in the following two summers combined. So, yes, I’m treading a little more lightly on the planet (though I can do better still, of course).

Which brings me back to the question that started all this for me: How was the system’s production affected by all the storms? These two monthly charts show that:

This underscores what I said at the time: Cyclone Hale wasn’t too bad in Hamilton—roughly like any other rainy day—and the Anniversary Weekend storm was much worse. Cyclone Gabrielle, however, was the worst of all. There were still good days for solar production in those months, but bad days can be very bad.

In each of the past two summers, February was less productive than either December or January, and that makes sense: Bad weather is most likely in February, which is in cyclone season. Even so, production is always highest in summer, and lowest in winter, due to the longer days of summer (more sunlight). Winter is usually rainier/overcast more than in summer, too, further reducing the amount of power that can be generated.

That’s my swim through the pools of data about how the solar panels perform. The main thing I found is the most obvious thing: The panels are helping me to achieve my goal and to live a piece of the dream that Nigel and I had. That’s a huge win. The lower power bills are pretty good, too, though.

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 366 is now available

AmeriNZ Podcast episode 366, “Expected results”, is now available from the podcast website. There, you can listen, download or subscribe to the podcast episode, along with any other episode.

The five most recent episodes of the podcast are listed on the sidebar on the right side of this blog.

Was it worth it?

The solar power system at my house has now been running for 12 full months. That leads to an obvious question: After a year living with the system, was installing it worth it? The short answer is, “yes, absolutely,” but the story, and why I say that, is complicated. It’s so complicated, in fact, that it’s taken me quite a long time to get this post completed.

First, though, a reminder of why I did this at all.

When I had the system installed, my motivation was simple: I wanted to tread more lightly on the planet, especially so that the technology I use and love wouldn’t take electricity from the national power grid. This reflects the values that Nigel and I shared, though for this particular one he wanted to use a wind turbine, something I knew was too problematic in the urban environment where I now live. At the time he died, Nigel was researching how to build a battery powerwall, which he definitely could’ve done, and we were planning to move somewhat more rural so we could have a wind turbine. In my new reality, it was clear that solar power was the best solution for me. All of that—and especially the fact that installing the system matched the values and goals that Nigel and I shared—is why I can say that yes, absolutely, installing it was worth it.

Next, some background: While the system itself included items the installer offered at special prices, it wasn’t subsidised in any way whatsoever: There were no tax breaks, and no power company offered any subsidy (none of them ever have). However, as part of the installation package, I switched to an electricity provider that gave me larger credits per kWh of electricity that I generate and send to the power grid (every other other company at that time paid less, sometimes dramatically so). In a sense, that’s a kind of subsidy, however, even at that higher rate, the electricity company still sells the power they “buy” from me at a much higher rate than what they credit my account with (they don’t actually pay me any money). Also, I have no ongoing costs, like loan servicing or anything else. So, the system was installed, switched on, and that was that. The last part of the system was installed in late May 2021, and so, the entire systems wasn’t up and running until the June 2021 billing month.

With all that out of the way, it’s time to talk money. The most common way that people look at the financial cost/benefit of such systems is to compare apples to apples: What would my power bill be if I didn’t have solar panels on the roof? That’s easy to see through the bills, but it's not even almost the complete story. Still, it’s a good place to start.

Over the first 12 months that the completed system was installed, I would've paid at least (I’ll come back to the “at least” part soon) $1,677.48 if I didn’t have the solar panels. However, my account received $746.97 in credits for the electricity my panels sent to the power grid, which was roughly 44% of the total I’d have paid without the panels. Looking at that another way, without the solar panels, my electricity bill would’ve averaged out at 139.79 per month, as opposed to the $77.54 that the monthly bills actually averaged out to (in reality, some winter months were much higher than the average, and summer months were much lower).

From a purely financial perspective, then, it would seem that the panels don’t create a large, obvious financial return. After all, at that rate it would take some 19 years before I’d break even (ignoring depreciation). However, appearances are deceiving.

Much—even most—of the positive financial aspect is invisible, and here’s why: The bills from the electricity company contain charges for the amount of electricity I buy from them, minus credit for the electricity I send to them, and that’s what I’ve just been discussing. However, the power from the solar panels that I use as it’s made is free—no one charges me for that.

This means that the credits I get from the electricity company for the electricity I send to them are for what’s leftover after I’ve used solar power to run the house. None of that power (called “self-consumption”, which sounds weird…) is tracked by the power company, of course, but I can look at charts produced by the “smart inverter” that runs the solar power system. On a sunny day, the power I need to run my house comes entirely from the solar power system AND I send some to the electricity company. In summer, when the weather is usually sunny and there are more daylight hours, that can mean sending a substantial amount of electricity to the power company on top of what I use. At night, it’s the opposite, and on dark, rainy, or heavily cloudy days, especially in winter, it’s mixed. When all of my household power needs are supplied by my solar power system, as it is on every sunny day and many cloudy ones, I’m 100% self-sufficient.

This self-consumption is the part that some people often overlook when calculating the true financial benefit from a solar power system. The electricity company charges me 27.35¢ per kWh for the power I buy from them, but they only credit me at 16¢ per kWh for the power I send to the grid. So, every kWh of self-consumed power saves me the equivalent of 11.35¢ per kWh. That hidden financial benefit is significant.

Let’s put some numbers into that. Normally, I’d get the actual production data from the smart inverter, but I can’t: There was a problem with it last year, and it didn’t report data from late June 2021 to late November 2021 (there were Covid Lockdowns in that period and, frankly, I was busy and just didn’t notice for a long time), so a LOT of the data is missing. Also, the inverter records data by calendar month, while my electricity is billed around the 22nd of the month—not a perfect match, in other words, but if I had data for the full 12 months I could work out the annual financial benefit from self-consumption.

Here’s what I DO know: I know for sure that that I saved $487.16 through self-consumption in the seven months of November 2021 through May 2022, and that’s money that I would’ve paid to the electricity company if I didn’t have the solar power system—remember, that self-consumption is power I actually used and would’ve used with or without the solar panels. That works out to an average savings of $69.59 a month for those seven months. If I use that amount for the whole 12 months, it would mean a savings of more than $800 for those 12 months—more than the credits I got on my power bill. In fact, using power through self-consumption while still sending some to the grid means that it’s at least possible, and probably likely, that my true savings on power over the first 12 months was actually at least as much as what I actually paid. Let me say that again: Using as much of the power I’m generating as I can, and sending the rest to the power grid, means my actual power costs without the solar power system would have been roughly double what I actually paid: $1,677.48 (before credits) for the year is way better than paying some $3200! It also means that I’ll reach the break-even point (again, ignoring depreciation) in half the amount of time.

This is difficult to grasp—it has been for me, anyway. I understand that I’m billed for the electricity I buy from the power company, an amount reduced by the power I send to the grid. The solar power that I use to run my house—the largely hidden savings from self-consumption—is power that I would otherwise buy from the power company, but I don’t need to, and until I started work on this analysis, it never occurred to me to account for it. And that’s why the actual savings are much better than what it looks like when looking only at power bills, as I always used to do.

Obviously I’d say that yes, absolutely, it was worth it to install the solar power system, because that would’ve been true regardless of the financials: This was always mainly about living my values. However, when you look at the totality of those financials, it makes financial sense for me, too. Living our values doesn’t have to mean losing money in the process.

This post has been about my own experience with solar power, something I did as a values-based decision and not a money-based one. The are ways to make the financial side better (or worse…), but for me, being able to live my values while also getting any financial benefit at all? Yes, definitely worth it.