Renewables: "talking 'bout my generation"

legoman62

Still dark here at 10 AM....then showers, heavy rain and a cloudburst at 12.00:eek:

Guess we were lucky compared to those poor people in Cumbria:sad:

Some sun PM. Ended today with 0.6 O's or 2.4 kWh:D

edwink

0.31 O's for us today


Edwink

Sterlingtimes

I hardly had time to look up today to see the sun, but rather surprisingly I achieved a little more than an O >>> 1.02.

Merlin139

0.93333333333333333333333's Today!

pinnks

"Cracking" day here - 1.25 Os. Totally unexpected based on the forecast but hey, who's complaining!

Oscargrouch

pinnks wrote: »

"Cracking" day here - 1.25 Os. Totally unexpected based on the forecast but hey, who's complaining!

Me; only did 1.36 O's.........

ajbell

0.96 Os today.

SavingFish

ajbell wrote: »

What energy monitors work with solar panels to give you a net figure for energy use.

You need to be slightly careful with this depending on how your inverter has been wired up.

These diagrams show it better than I can explain it in words...
http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/sites/default/files/PV%20monitor%20OEM%20compare.png
http://www.121energy.com/images/images/Screen_Shot_2015-02-18_at_22.19.53.png

If you have a type 1 installation then you have many options, pretty much anything describing itself as a PV energy monitor.

If you have a type 2 installation you need some way of knowing whether you are importing an exporting. Owl solves this with a Y-cable, OpenEnergyMonitor and Immersun solve this by sampling the voltage from the socket they are plugged into. There are other monitors that will work too.

There is also a second potential gotcha:
For myself, my installer left me in a right pickle. The cable from the inverter is a "twin core plus earth" type. That means that putting a clamp on it is useless - the current in the live wire cancels out the current in the neutral wire and so nothing is read. That cuts out any setup that uses more than one clamp

In the end I have ended up using an emonPi. This can read the house import/export using one CT clamp, but separately, being a Raspberry Pi, it can also pull generation data from my SMA inverter over bluetooth. The whole lot can then be combined to give household consumption = generation + import.

Bit of a hassle to set up though :P
(Might have been easier to get an electrician to change the wiring.)

Oscargrouch

SavingFish wrote: »

You need to be slightly careful with this depending on how your inverter has been wired up.

These diagrams show it better than I can explain it in words...
http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/sites/default/files/PV%20monitor%20OEM%20compare.png
http://www.121energy.com/images/images/Screen_Shot_2015-02-18_at_22.19.53.png

If you have a type 1 installation then you have many options, pretty much anything describing itself as a PV energy monitor.

If you have a type 2 installation you need some way of knowing whether you are importing an exporting. Owl solves this with a Y-cable, OpenEnergyMonitor and Immersun solve this by sampling the voltage from the socket they are plugged into. There are other monitors that will work too.

There is also a second potential gotcha:
For myself, my installer left me in a right pickle. The cable from the inverter is a "twin core plus earth" type. That means that putting a clamp on it is useless - the current in the live wire cancels out the current in the neutral wire and so nothing is read. That cuts out any setup that uses more than one clamp

In the end I have ended up using an emonPi. This can read the house import/export using one CT clamp, but separately, being a Raspberry Pi, it can also pull generation data from my SMA inverter over bluetooth. The whole lot can then be combined to give household consumption = generation + import.

Bit of a hassle to set up though :P
(Might have been easier to get an electrician to change the wiring.)

Hmmm,

Martyn1981

SavingFish wrote: »

If you have a type 1 installation then you have many options, pretty much anything describing itself as a PV energy monitor.

Hiya. I'm not an electrician, and not sure I'm understanding type 1 correctly, but is that legal in the UK? It looks like the PV is feeding into the mains, but I thought PV in the UK had to be hard wired into the consumer unit.

Please be gentle, I'm way out of my depth here!

Mart.