Finally, The Solar Graphic

For new readers, I've been reporting on our experience with new solar panels on our southwest-facing roof these last few months.  I'm having a bit of trouble managing the graphic transfer from PGE's website to this newsletter, but see below:

The blue line is our electric consumption; red is the ''typical home,'' and yellow is ''the typical efficient home.''   The college students left at the end of this data series, so that's not the explanation for the rather steep drop!  Our electricity consumption has dropped precipitously since the solar panels finally got connected (about six months after we signed up, by the way).  Their use pushes us from the expensive 36 cents a kilowatt hour marginal rate to the 13 cents a kilowatt hour rate, so we're using less net electricity, and that which we're using is much cheaper on a unit basis.

We need more months with the numbers, but so far, so good!  This last month, we saved quite a bit more than the promised $135/mo on our bill--and that represented a 4% risk-free (?) return on our investment.  See the last page of http://www.icebase.com/dbadmin/print.pl?FirstMailingList_2Q13 for the graphic.