What's causing the consumption peak I've noticed on my Solarman smart app?

Hi @philipH !

We can try to help answer your question, but I’m not quite sure what you’re asking. Could you clarify please?

I have the SOLARMAN smart app. It shows production and consumption on a graph with red a blue colours respectively. We produce some energy through solar panels but there is nearly always a corresponding rise in consumption showing red on the graph at the same time. I don’t understand what is consuming energy at this time as we are out. We have a solar iboost which heats hot water when panels are producing power. 

Interesting… That’s rather strange…

We’ve actually got quite a few members on here who know this stuff far better than I do. Let me introduce you to one of them. @hydrosam is probably the most likely expert here that I can think of.

Look forward to hearing from @hydrosam 

many thanks

P

Another solar generator on board! Welcome to the OVO online community, @philipH.

As @Blastoise186 mentions we’ve got a few fellow green energy generators here already who might be able too shed some more light on those graph anomalies.

Just gonna tag a few solar experts here - @EverythingNeedsAUserName, @PeterR1947, @malc_smith, @f0rtune, @JoeC, @hambrook  - Any ideas on what might be consuming energy around that production peak? 

That consumption peak (in red)is around the time of peak panel production (in blue) but not always and it often happens when there is no usage from the house. My only thought was that the SOLARiBoost which uses power from the panels/battery to heat water in the tank is kicking in and showing as consumption on the graph although it’s not consuming from the grid. 
look forward to hearing some thoughts on this

philipH wrote:

 

 

Seems to make sense to me that this is the Solar iBoost - the house is increasing it’s consumption to use up the solar energy so it’s not sent back to the grid? We have a battery that acts in a similar fashion!

The only surprise is that the boost only takes place later and not as soon as there is spare solar. You might want to check the iboost configuration as it seems like you’re wasting some of the your solar production at the moment. Could it be set to only come on after a certain time of day?
Obviously also depends on when you’re consuming the hot water.

Thank you @PeterR1947 i shall give that a go. 
 

thank you also @JoeC . we have battery storage so the production from the panels is not wasted ,I hope. 
some days it doesn’t show any usage at all for the period we are talking about. Other days the consumption wave completely mirrors the blue production wave. 
most hot water is used evening washing up there is usually plenty of hot water to do that. if there is not enough hot water in tank by the morning you can see from the red consumption our water heating kicks in at 5 am

I wonder if the water is hot enough from the 5am boost that the solar isn’t needed until the afternoon. Predicting when you might get solar the next day will need some form of smart device to control that but I’m not sure there’s anything off the shelf.
If you have a battery then the gains would be negligible so not one to worry about.

Hi @JoeC 

water heating comes on at 5am and tops up to heat level whatever hot water remains in tank. 
we then use showers around 6.30am. If we don’t have water heating on during winter there is not enough hot water from solar heating alone for the morning showers. In summer we don’t need this additional boost from the grid/boiler. 
 

Any updates on this one, @philipH?

Did turning the Solar iBoost off help to identify the consumption peak as @PeterR1947 suggested?