How to Optimise Your Solar Power for Maximum Cost Savings
How to Save More Energy and Cost by Monitoring Energy Usage
Your electricity bill can cause headaches when you feel like it’s out of control. But reducing your electricity bill can be an even bigger headache. Either you invest in expensive, time-consuming systems or subject yourself to uncomfortable conditions.What if there was an easier way? The answer is energy usage monitoring.
How to Store Your Energy More Efficiently
Electricity costs depend on lots of variables, like peak usage times, taxes, and weather conditions. Fortunately now, solar power is becoming more and more accessible for Australian home owners and the cheapest way of producing electricity compared to other power generation methods.
In fact, Solar is so widely adopted in Australia that the biggest source of power generation in Queensland now sits on your rooftops and not only in the power plants. The combined capacity of solar PV systems amounts to more than the Gladstone coal-fired power station, the biggest power station in the state. In addition, solar panel installation is expected to last at least 25 years and payback time is between 3-5 years depends on your feed in tariff.
However, one restriction that comes with producing your own solar energy is, of course, the availability of sunlight. If you want energy through the night, or for a rainy day, you’ll have to store it with a battery. This option is a relative no-brainer. Pack back time
Battery storage will help you to store excess energy that you do not use during off-peak times and then you can use your excess energy when you need to so that you aren’t charged for peak time cost. Peak time means that electricity usage is the highest at home like everyone is at home and using appliances. We can say between 3 pm – 9 pm at summer times.
How to Find the Best Solution
To put this in place, you first need to research the best feed-in tariffs and tariff types. Feed-in tariffs are applied when you export your excess energy to the grid and determine the amount of money you receive back for adding your “supply”.
Tariff Types
There are four types of tariffs. These are: standard residential tariff, time of use tariff, demand tariff and economy or controlled load tariff. With these tariffs, customers pay the same price of their energy usage regardless of usage time on standard residential tariff.
Time-of-use tariffs apply high prices during peak times in the summer months and applies lower prices rest of the year. Demand tariffs charge demand during peak times and the peak usage resets each month.
Controlled load tariffs are used for hardwired appliance like pool pumps and electricity may not be available all the time.
The Case for Monitoring Your Energy Use
It is very important to know your energy usage pattern when you choose your tariff type. For example, if you are generally out a lot in the evenings and you are at home during day times, the best option would be time of use tariff to save your money, but many of us do not pay attention to our energy usage monitoring and monitore electricity industry terminology is often too complicated for most of us to understand.
Many people don’t even know if it is worth monitoring their energy use, so let’s talk about that for a minute.
Using solar panels should work with energy efficiency solutions to increase your revenue if your panels are maintained properly, however it helps you to achieve your energy usage monitoring using an energy management system.
Energy usage monitoring systems helps you to understand your energy consumption and production, and some of them, like our inavitas energy intelligence platform, give you options to control your system remotely, something that wasn’t available before the Internet of Things. Inavitas energy intelligence is energy management platform shows insight of your energy in and out
Just by paying attention to energy usage monitoring alone, you can save up to 6.5% on your energy usage, which is worth enough to take action. This is because you will be aware of your consumption and you will be able to develop strategies on how to reduce your consumption without sacrificing your comfort zone because inavitas energy intelligence platform learns your consumption and production patterns.
inavitas energy intelligence platform sends you an alert when something is wrong on your system or your consumption is high which will give you a chance to tailor your alarms.
To learn more, visit inavitas.
