After 2,435 days, our SunnyBoy solar inverter is going away. During its time perched silently on our garage wall, it effortlessly logged every watt of electricity our solar array produced.
And in that time period, we generated 50,370,000 watt-hours of electricity. Yes, 50 MWh. That’s an average of almost 21 kWh per day, every day. Not too shabby.
But as with all things, technology advances. And with climate change becoming even more prominent, we felt we wanted to add a measure of comfort and security in case our electricity went out. We’ve had ice storms in recent years and smoke from fires to the extent that sometimes the electric grid in our area goes down.
Our solar system was originally installed with a 110v outlet in case the power went out, we could switch over to solar and run at least a few items off that plug. But it was manual. And cumbersome.
So on February 23, we are having our SunnyBoy removed (and donated to a non-profit that installs off-grid solar in developing countries, more on that later) and a new Enphase system installed. It will have battery backup and be controlled via an app on our phone.