Last month, I posted about how the sunny and dry weather in July led to the most productive month ever from our home solar panels.

Apparently, Mother Nature believed I was gloating and needed to be punished, because our solar energy production fell dramatically in August.

Our rooftop solar panels produced almost 30% less energy in August than they did in July. Although our power consumption also declined, as the air conditioning didn’t have to work quite as hard as it did the month before, we still had to tap into some of the solar energy credits we’ve been saving up for next winter since April to keep our electric bill as low as possible.

While I’m happy the energy credits were there to use, I certainly wasn’t expecting we’d need to make a withdrawal from the bank during the summer!

Last year, we produced enough energy during the late summer and fall that we didn’t need to use any of our solar energy credits until November. I was expecting a similar result this year.

But obviously Mother Nature had other plans!

The good news is we have a lot more credits saved for the winter than we did at this time last year. I’m also still hopeful we’ll add to our stockpile of credits during September and October, like we did last year. Our production so far in September has been good, and it’s almost the end of air conditioning season in our neck of the woods, so our energy usage is also headed in the right direction!