measuring the sunlight

The man from the power company has just been to install our new metre. We've recently had eight solar panels put up on the roof. Before he changed over to the fancy new box with the digital read-out, he showed me how the old one was working: the horizontal disc very slowly revolving backwards; and the dial very slowly winding backwards. Yay! we were putting power back into the grid! But as soon as the new box was put in; and all the appliances kick-started again after a 20 minute break; and the sun went behind the clouds, the new metre was registering that we were drawing power again. How distracting could that be? the possibility of running out every half hour to see if we are producing or consuming power?  Still, this means that in summer, I'm not going to feel too bad switching on our little air-conditioner in our upstairs bedroom.

Ooh, the sun's coming out again: hooray!