14 DAY TRIAL // Two individual companies announced that their scientists were working on panel-like devices, aimed at showing owners the exact amount of energy their solar panels create each day, the total household usage and all the differences in between. The announcements were made yesterday (October 15th) in San Diego, by SolarCity and Open Energy, which vowed to create economically-feasible products for homeowners to incorporate into their management systems.
The panels are designed so as to record all the electrical energy households use over a day, as well as the maximum output that the panel can give for 24 hours. The companies say that this will be useful for owners because, in some places, the peak consumption around noon and early in the evening can cause panel owners to pay extra money for electricity.
Having the option of seeing exactly how much energy is consumed and what the production capabilities are, people who possess solar panels could easily tell what time of the day is best fitted to start consuming more power. Such activities may include common tasks like turning on the washing machine to do the laundry. SolarCity CEO, Lyndin Rive, said "The biggest energy-efficiency challenge in every house is not changing light bulbs. It's changing behavior."
On the other hand, California-based Open Energy hopes to create a touch screen of sorts, whose interactive environment could help panel owners manage their energy consumption with greater efficiency. The advantage this product has over SolarCity's is that it can also display water and gas usage from the home. It also has an Internet gateway and it can go on-line to report usage statistics.
The costs for these products will be somewhere in the vicinity of $1,500. The companies say that they will come with free solar panel monitoring for a period of about five years. SolarCity wants to incorporate its device in its standard offers, so that its cost could be offset over time, not paid all at once by end-users.