Solar Income

 I check two financial variables most days. The first is the DOW. I don't know which stock variables have the most to do with my retirement and this one is not it, but I started noticing the DOW back in 2008 when the financial crisis hit and my retirement account was also losing money. It was easier to find the daily report for the DOW than to try to find what happened in my TIAA/CREF account. Anyway, the market seems to go up and down and just seems to meander around lately, 

The other variable I check is the data from our solar arrays. They have a fun app that allows you to see how many watts are being generated and how much money this is worth. My report even informs me how many hours I could use a 100 watt light bulb with the energy our panels produced.

We knew our investment in solar was not going to generate a great deal of money. The orientation of our roof is not ideal and we were told that we might be able to cover about half of our monthly bill (say half of $100). They let us know we would not really recoup our investment, but contributing to green energy seemed the right thing to do.

We just got to the end of a month so I took a look. 

January was not a great month for solar in Minnesota. There were several heavy snows without much wind and our panels were completely covered for multiple days. As the snow melted a little and some slid off some of the panels, we had days with little sun. Our total income was $2.40. This is enough energy to run a 100 watt light bulb for 19 nights. Why would the variable be nights and not hours? Is that all night or until say 10 or so? Not well defined.