If you’ve shelled out the several thousand dollars required these days to get a solar array installed at your house, then you know that it’s all about the light level that lets you figure out just how much power you’re generating.  But the old Mark One Eyeball isn’t exactly the best candidate for figuring out how much sun is shining at any given time.

Enter the Lightgauge, from Lighthouse Solar in Boulder, Colorado.  The Lightgauge is a wall-mounted device that tracks energy produced and energy used in real-time, showing if there’s a surplus or a deficit created at any time.  Lighthouse has recently started including the Lightgauge in all of its solar panel systems.

When they say real-time, they mean it, too–shutting off a light causes the graph to dip towards equilibrium, on screen.

This is a pretty cool idea, frankly, and hopefully, Lightgauges will be part of everybody’s solar system these days.

[via Daily-camera.com]

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