EON PV system installed by Mark Group - PV gen meter seems to have lower reading

KMA

hi there wondering if you good people can help. Have had an EON Solar PV system installed by mark Group in November 2011, everything has been going fine, consistent generation year to year etc.


Received a card through the letter box last week, EON want to do their every two years physical meter inspection. I wasn't there when the chap arrived to read the meter in the garage. Other half let him in to read it. All done - assumed everything OK.


Today received a letter from eon dated 16th October demanding to check our FIT meter, stating that the reading does not fall in line with previous readings. They've asked for a photo of the meter to validate it in a timescale of the 26 October. I last submitted a FIT reading in late August which was higher than it is now! <eek!>


I went to check it in the garage (only check it now on a monthly basis these days, now that the generation established is pretty stable and I don't have an in-home monitor. Sure enough the reading is lower than before! The last time I read it it was over 13,000 kw units at the start of October but now the reading is back down to a level in July 2015 of 12,200 kw units. I've been pretty good at marking these all down in the kitchen calendar, as we knew when we hit 12,500 kwh that we had reached 50% of the cost of our system paid back and had a little celebration on the 10th August 2015!!!!


There is no way we could have misread the meter recently, the figures are steadily rising.


Is there something gone recently wrong with the digital meter? Has it been reset externally?


Anyone else got an EON system / Mark Installation or a meter that has been playing up?


Any advice most welcome and would really like to speak to Malc the EON representative.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Hi KMA

Sounds like your meter's running backwards. Don't worry, this can be quickly sorted by changing the meter. It was a problem with some earlier meters and, as your system was installed in 2011, this is why I suspect this particular issue. Later meters are fitted with a backstop to prevent this happening in future.

What usually happens is the meter develops a fault and stops in a similar way to conventional meters. As you're generating electricity through your solar PV system, though, this causes the meter to go back. You'll only see this if generation exceeds usage.

If you respond to the letter and send us a photograph, we can put this right. Once the meter's been changed, we can estimate a final reading based on previous usage. We'll send you a detailed breakdown of these calculations.

We've a specialist team who deal exclusively with backwards running meters and these are the advisors to talk to. They'll be happy to sort this out for you.

Hope this points you in the right direction KMA.

Malc

Martyn1981

E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc wrote: »

Hi KMA

Sounds like your meter's running backwards.

Malc

I might be wrong but I thought KMA was referring to their TGM not their import meter, which is very strange.

Mart.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

Could be Mart and I've the wrong end of the stick. Nothing unusual about that. Although their description does sound like the old running backwards problem? I'd still encourage them to talk to the specialist team I mentioned though as issues with solar and Feed-in-Tariffs sit in the same area.

Have a good weekend Mart.

Malc

jimjames

Have you always been reading the same meter? If you've read the output from the inverter then it can be different, sometimes significantly, from the generation meter.

KMA

Hi there Mart, you are totally correct, YES it is my FIT meter (ie my TGM - total generation meter?!) which is what is very bizarre and concerning me....

I thought it was a "FIT & forget" thing, having had no problems experienced since the install back in late November 2011....

It is as if it has been interrogated remotely taking a reading from a previous time in the past or that it has been reset back to a previous time period, which in my case, given figures collected so far was around July 2015 rather than October! (which given our roof slope and aspect is one of our generation sweetspots). :-0

The TGM I have for my generation measurements concerned is an EDMI one (digital meter)

Malc- just to clarify it's NOT my regular Electricity supply meter (which is also a modern digital one)

This clearly requires further investigation, would appreciate if anyone else has experienced this. Alternatively, if you have had a similar install or have this type of meter you might want to check yours out too....

The problem seems to have been triggered by the every two year actual reading event, sadly I was not there in person when the EON chap did his meter check reading in our garage.... but apparently he was only in there for a short while whilst my other half got the car out of the garage to go to work so did not ask about/check what he was doing...(which I would do as I'm interested and a bit geeky like that!)

I keep my own records doing a physical reading of the TGM about once a month these days (I don't have an in-home monitor gizmo) since production has been so consistent in the past 3 years with no degradation so far (used to religiously collect daily stats for the first year on PVoutput). The system has been producing just slightly more than was predicted in EON's original estimate (it was EON who sold me the Solar PV system) so it seems to not add up....

Will update when/if I have more info.... but I am not a happy bunny, this sort of thing reduces confidence in getting/having new tech....


Want to get to the bottom of this....



Thanks for responding so promptly Mart & Malc, much appreciated!

EricMears

KMA wrote: »

It is as if it has been interrogated remotely taking a reading from a previous time in the past or that it has been reset back to a previous time period, which in my case, given figures collected so far was around July 2015 rather than October! (which given our roof slope and aspect is one of our generation sweetspots). :-0

. . . . . .

The problem seems to have been triggered by the every two year actual reading event

Is there a button (or even more than one) that you can press to display different variables on the screen ? If yes, try pressing it to see what else is shown there. Always possible that for some obscure reason you really have got the meter displaying genuine readings for July instead of current ones.

Have you got comparative readings for the inverter ? If you can show that TGM & Inverter were marching in step until (say) July but have diverged since then you may be able to convince FIT provider that TGM is faulty and use inverter readings to calculate corrected TGM readings.

Former_E.ON_Company_Representative:_Malc

[QUOTE=KMA;69396038

Malc- just to clarify it's NOT my regular Electricity supply meter (which is also a modern digital one)

Thanks for responding so promptly Mart & Malc, much appreciated![/QUOTE]

Sorry KMA. Wrong end of the stick. I'd still talk to our FIT team though as they deal exclusively with this type of issue. Contact details are on our website. If you can send the photo mentioned in the letter we've sent, this will help speed things up.

Sorry again for the wrong steer KMA.

Malc

Freepost

Hi KMA,

Sorry to hear of your difficulties with the FiT reading. You say that you check the TGM reading about once a month and record these readings. So you have readings for Aug and Sept, presumably you will also have readings from previous years? If so you can show that the readings are broadly in line with previous months/years and that the TGM has developed a fault, or been tampered with.


Your readings/generation is very similar to my own, being installed 22 November’11 ( 3.82kW System on a SWW orientation), my TGM reading today is 13069 whereas the reading on the Inverter is 13347 [I know I’m losing 2% somewhere] are you able to obtain a reading from your Inverter? If so it can back up your reasoning of a faulty TGM or that it’s been tampered with by the meter reader, although I’m not too sure how he could tamper with the TGM.


You mention that eon say the reading is not in line with previous readings, again you can compare this if you retained the previous readings, for the record, although it has been a lousy summer my generation is the best since installation and is up 270kWh on last year, I imagine it’s the same with you and everybody else?


Good luck!


F.