WARNING SOLAR PANELS & some Siemens S2AS-100/ Siemens S1AS-100 Meters

John_Pierpoint

I have an "EDF" meter - manufacturer unknown - it records Economy 7 and "expensive 17" somewhere inside. It then displays one, two and both added together. It also has a flashing red light that flashes each time a watt goes through the meter.
[Didn't half confuse meter readers when it was new (not my idea) about 4 years ago.]
I bet internally the Siemens meter does something similar BUT who wants scrambled bills because the meter reader does not understand it?

John.

[Siemens got a 15 minute "free" advert on "How do they do it", Channel 5 this morning, promoting their high speed trains.
The no wearing parts on the massive breaking system was really impressive - I wish I had it on my car :rotfl:
There was also a eulogy about how the trains tilted round the corners - I though British Rail was first to try that, but on our wiggly railways the punters could not open the windows when they felt ill

Energy equation roughly 10 horse power per passenger when fully loaded, compared with your family car at more like 25 horse power per passenger.]

furndire wrote: »

And this has just put the icing on the cake for me .- Atlantic know that we have panels. Not seen this before - don't know when it was put on their site. God not another thing to check out. My poor old brain is totally mushed. Are they saying this is instead of FiT payments.??? can't be as well as - can it?

https://www.atlanticeg.co.uk/BeingGreen/Microrenewables/SolarPVTariff/

This means that a householder or small business generating 1,500kWh of power a year (just under half the average household’s electricity consumption) will earn around £210 a year if they export 50% of the total power generated. For customers who export the majority of their generation, we believe this is the best export tariff in the market.

Why does my cynical old brain think this might translate into
...........but you geenies will be paying over the odds for the electricity you buy from us in the day time..........I wonder how it then continues ...........as for that cheap nuclear stuff in the middle of the night {your only hope is to do the ironing after midnight / greenies don't like it so forget it, we wont be offering cheap "half life" electricity on this tariff}

Cardew

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

This means that a householder or small business generating 1,500kWh of power a year (just under half the average household’s electricity consumption) will earn around £210 a year if they export 50% of the total power generated. For customers who export the majority of their generation, we believe this is the best export tariff in the market.

Surely that is the old ROC scheme that was in force before the introduction of FITs last year???????

espresso

If you are interested in analysing some actual documented daily imported/exported readings, then see here

The industry has known how various types of meters react to exported energy for many years now e.g. see this Ofgem document of 2003 here

It seems to be up to your supplier or the supplier that you choose to claim your FIT payments from, how they actually administer the payments i.e. simply assume 50% of generated energy for the 3p/kWh export tariff, fit a meter that also registers exported energy or fit a separate export meter. If you want to sell exported energy for more than the standard 3p rate, then an export meter reading is a requirement.

Posting incorrect information is not helpful and dunloadin is simply demonstrating his lack of basic electrical knowledge on this subject by posting this completely incorrect statement:

dunloadin wrote: »

The only way to correctly record the electricity used by the customer and the generated electricity is to have two separate meters NOT wired in series.

Many customers with solar PV systems do have one meter that records both imported and exported energy. If an additional separate export meter is fitted alongside the original import meter, then it is wired in series with the original meter!

If you export more than 1/2 that you generate, get an import/export meter, then you'll get all the 3Ps you're entitled to. If you only have an import meter, you will get an assumed export based on 50% of the units you generate.

I think you'll find that you have little choice in having a new meter. The old one should have been changed when the PV was installed.

Whether or not you opt for a dual function import/export meter (if you are given that option) or just get an ordinary import meter depends on whether you export more than 50% of what you generate. If your actual export is higher than 50% then it's worth getting the export meter (assuming there is no charge for it).

Export meters have to be registered under the Balancing and Settlement Code (BSC) which now seems to take several months for some completely unknown reason. Until the meter is registered you will still be treated as having a deemed 50% export.

When I worked for London Electricity all changes to metering details were processed on the day of notification.

I have just had me "free" export meter fitted by Scottish and Southern. It actually replaces the original meter and by pushing the readout button you can read off Day, Night and Export readings. So I have 2 meters - the Total Generation Meter and the Import/Export meter.

The Day / Night are read in the normal way by the meter reader every quarter or so and you are billed in the normal way. All Fits and export payments are totally separate. S&S send out a form at the end of every quarter and you fill in the Total Generation reading and the Export reading. They then send you a cheque for the appropriate amount. I have just had my first form to fill in and interestingly it says that even though they have fitted an export meter they cannot pay me the export tariff (3p per unit) until it has been registered by Ofgem which could take "6 to 8 months" !!!!!! Until then I will be paid for 50% of my generation.This is a bit annoying as even on a good day I only achieve about 30% and thats if we do all cooking and washing during the day otherwise we are lucky to hit 15%.

My potential interest has increased since the installation of our "proper" export meter. Instead of adding a separate export meter they replaced the old import meter with a dual purpose import/export meter that only has 1 blinking LED. As a result the "count the blinks" technology I was already using is now suffering from the "no sense of direction" problem that affects most CT based solutions and that Brultech's net metering CT's solves...

Unfortunately most energy companies are still giving incorrect advice when asked about export meters for domestic feed-in tariffs, see here but I'm sure that your situation will soon be resolved to your satisfaction, although not necessarily on Tuesday.

Cardew

espresso wrote: »

If you are interested in analysing some actual documented daily imported/exported readings, then see here

Really excellent website with surely the most comprehensive set of data on the internet.

The important figure, for the 'Rent a roof' customers, is that he uses approx one third of the generated electricty in the house.

Being in his 70's he is presumable retired and home most of the day and really works hard at maximising in-house consumption.

John_Pierpoint

A word or two of warning from Espresso's link:

Be warned,
One energy company, 'Scottish and Southern Electric' is at present quoting times which in my view are totally unacceptable, Quote
We will endeavour to make payment within the following 13 weeks of receiving your meter readings. Unquote
which effectively means your credit will not be available for you next quarterly bill.
Also in my experience, no confirmation is received by either e-mail or letter as to:-
1. The readings for a given quarter have been received by the company

This in itself can cause further problems as the contract says that where the readings are not received by the company the payment may be carried over the the next quarter making the payment 6 months in arrears
but if they do not acknowledge your readings when you e-mail them, you will not know if they have received them or not! as a result you will not know if you are going to get paid for that quarter.

A bit like writing a letter to HMRC.

pauldreed

Furndire - I would be most suprised if your supplier did actually try to recover export readings from your meter.

The most likely outcome IMO, is that they will simply replace the meter, and then work out recompence in one of two ways;
1) they will use the readings from your generation meter, and pay you 50% (or a negotiated percentage) of the total power generated since the system was fitted. OR
2) once the new meter is fitted, they will monitor your power consumption over say 2 weeks, and use that as a benchmark on which to calculate your likely power usage since the panels were fitted.

As I am in a similar position as you, I hope that they use 2) because our power usage at this time of the year is low (dry washing on washing line, fewer hot meals, less lighting needed, higher solar generation etc).
If 1) then although I could provide details from ASG's generation meter, I very much doubt that I use 50% of the solar power (as Cardew has pointed out) and therefore I will be out of pocket.
Scottish Power have told me that they intend to use 2) although I await the finer detail...

There may be other compensation options, but in any event, I hope that you get it resolved to your satisfaction.

furndire

Thanks paulreed
If they go by power used now, I would gain as well, as 6mths was over the winter, so wouldn't have imported much at all. I really feel that I want to push them to get the data off - dilemma (but it will cost me in cash). I am so fed up with what has happened.
Originally I thought that Atlantic was part of Scottish Power, but Dunloadin pointed out its part of SSE/Hydro. I'm going to be asking for compensation for phone calls I've made as well - loads of them.
I have just remembered, they were supposed to get back to me re recompense as well, and didn't, so that will be somthing I will be bringing up again on Monday, before they come out on Tuesday.
I have said on a few places that if it wasn't for the FiTs payments solar would not be worth having - hopefully I will start to feel differently before too long.

I feel that even when we get sorted I want to make sure that people are aware of what is happening - as I am sure there are others with panels like me who couldn't tell what was going on, especially if some of the suppliers & installers had already seen this happening, and didn't act decisively to make it public knowledge.

Its not helped by the fact that meters are only read twice a year, so gains & losses are evened out, and not noticed.

pauldreed

In order to bill you for power that you have used, they must have a system of accurate metering, and of course they havn't!
So if they make us a compensation offer which is not agreeable, I think that we can take it to the Energy Onbudsman, so it is in the power companies interest to play fair and reach an agreement with us.

So I'm going to push for option 2) which seems the fairer of the two, forget the wasted time & phone calls, and keep it simple, quick and low stress!!

This is purely my opinion, but more knowledgeable posters may have other thoughts....

furndire

I can see your point.

How long have you had your system?

pauldreed

furndire wrote: »

I can see your point.

How long have you had your system?

October 2010