The weather in our part of the country was particularly harsh during January.

We were hit by multiple major snowstorms during the month, and the temperature rarely got above freezing, and was often well below zero degrees (F).

One result of the wintry weather was a miniature glacier forming across our rooftop solar panels, which severely limited our energy production during January. Our home solar power system generated essentially no energy for a period more than two weeks during the middle of the month while the ROMT Glacier existed, and our monthly production barely topped 100 kWh – 40% worse than any other month since we went solar!

The lack of production required us to make our largest withdrawal ever from the bank of solar energy credits we build up when the weather is sunnier to keep our electric bill low during the winter.

Fortunately, we had plenty in our credit bank to keep our January bill as low as possible, despite the inclement weather.

Even better, we still should have more than enough credits left to keep our electric bill low this month (helped by the fact our solar energy production for the first ten days of February has already topped what our rooftop panels produced last month!).

At this point, March seems like the most likely time for us to run out of credits for this winter. Fortunately, March is also likely to be the month when our production starts to ramp up as the days continue getting longer, which means I think there is a chance our system will have worked as intended and kept our electric bill at minimum levels for the entire year.

But the weather over the next several weeks will ultimately determine whether or not that actually occurs!