Saturday (17-August-2019) — New Jersey

Backyard Summertime Nature in New Jersey.

Day two putting up an electric fence around the Forsythia and Lilac bushes we planted earlier this spring.  It is hot out. One hour of the work recorded as a time-lapse video using a Garmin VIRB-360 camera.

Daily Electric Energy Used (66.9 kWh) from Sense and Daily Solar Electric Energy Produced (57.2 kWh) from SolSystems and Locus Energy. A bit more Sun, but I ran a load of laundry (3.1 kWh), a load of dishes, and cooked dinner in the oven (0.3 kWh) today. The WaterFurnace geothermal HVAC had to work harder (26.8 kWh) because of the extra heat generated by the laundry, dishwasher, and oven. Daily net deficit 9.7 kWh.

One note — the WaterFurnace Symphony software indicated the system used 14 kWh, however the Sense Energy monitor indicated that the geothermal heat pump used 26.3 kWh. I tend to believe the Sense numbers since they more closely the energy being recorded at the external power company (PSE&G) meters. I’ve asked the WaterFurnace folks in the past about the discrepancy, but they didn’t have a good answer. The Sense folks told me they thought that the WaterFurnace/Symphony system was only measuring one phase of the energy even though the system is powered by the 220V circut (using two phases). I wish an electrical engineer that understands this better would correct me here.

Current Weather Conditions

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Three-Years Ago (17-August-2016) — New Jersey

Backyard Summertime Night Sky Over New Jersey.

Night Time Thunderstorm. Two minute time-lapse video. Moon, Clouds, Lightning. Approximately 3000 Images taken between midnight and 4 AM from my backdoor using a Nikon D810A camera and 24 mm f/3.5 PC-E lens (ISO 800, 24 mm, f/4, 4 sec). At one point I had to move the camera away from the door during a heavy downpour. Time-lapse video created from the in camera jpg images using Photoshop CC. This was the fourth night in a row that we have had thunderstorms.