Since "first-light" on March 4th, 2013 the array has produced 9.18 GWh of electrical energy, 12.1% of the听college's use over the same time period. 听For equivalencies, especially regarding climate change, you听can punch in 9.18 GWh = 9180000 kWh听.
If you want to monitor the array yourself you can log into our solar array monitoring听,
Login ID = oxysolar
Password = 1600solar
Apps for your phone can be found by searching for the company which runs the website, AlsoEnergy.
On the financial side of things, our electrical bills have been lower these last three years due to the energy听generated by the solar array. 听Over the last year the solar array saved the college $278k. 听For comparison here听are the numbers from previous years,
1st year = $250k
2nd year = $293k
3rd year = $233k
4th year = $248k
5th year = $278k
These numbers vary by 9.4%, more than x4.5 the energy numbers, due to the LADWPs crazy pricing games and ever changing prices. 听I follow this closely since I am interested in whether our array will ever pencil out. 听The grand total savings so far is $1.302M on a purchase price of $3.423M so a simple minded analysis would suggest the array will pay for itself in 13.1 years. 听With a warrantied life of 25 years it is looking good. 听However getting money is not free. 听I assume we borrowed it from our endowment and are slowing returning it. 听All of the cleaning, weeding and inverter repairs are not free. 听Energy prices are increasing at about 5% per year. 听Throwing all of that into the mix I predict our array will pay for itself (surpass earnings we would have gotten if we had left the money in the endowment) in 17.4 years.
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Finally here鈥檚 a disturbing trend and a challenge for you, the Occidental community.
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The horizontal axis is Year and the vertical axis is Energy per Year (calendar) in GWh. 听The solid orange line shows the total energy billed to the college over the past 15 years. 听You can see a big break in 2013 when the solar array was installed. 听If I add the solar energy produced to what we are billed for I get the total, college, energy usage. 听This is the solid line until 2013 and the dashed line thereafter and fit with the thin black line. 听The college鈥檚 overall usage is going up at a rate of about 2 GWh every 15 years. 听Thus by the time the array pays for itself the environmental benefit of it will have been wiped out by increased usage! I challenge you to not let that happen. 听Saving energy is often much more cost effective than producing energy. 听The LED lights going in around campus are a great example of that. 听If you have a good idea, and can put in some time, I urge you to consider writing a proposal to the Occidental Sustainable Investment Fund (
OSIF). 听The OSIF is a $3.5M green revolving fund to encourage sustainable and fiscally sound improvements to facilities at the college. 听I am happy to share what data and help I can.
