Why is the same amount of energy drawn from the grid with my solar turned on or off? Could my SMETS1 meter or PV wiring be faulty?

Do you have a wiring diagram that shows how your solar PV is connected? Or some photos showing all the wiring?

Here it is. This diagram looks ok to me. I am not and electrician so I have no idea if it was indeed wired this way though.

It looks like everything is wired in correctly but I can't see how the meter can be doing what you describe.

Does your energy monitor have a CT clamp? Can you check what's coming into the meter?

Inside the house next to the door there is the consumer unit, the Netthings smart monitor and separately a box for the distribution board and total generation meter. All the cables hide behind these so I have no idea if there is a CT clamp and what is exactly those grey cables going into the meter come from...

This might be a silly question but can it be that those grey wires coming from the PV distribution board instead of the consumer unit?

So that way the consumer unit would be using (X minus solar generated) and then solar generation from the PV distribution gets added to that (total would be X in that case) and that is what’s then passed onto the smets1 meter.?

This might be complete nonsense but I can’t think of anything else except faulty smets1 meter.

I wonder if your energy monitor isn't recording what you think. It should have a CT clamp around whichever cable it's measuring and that could be round the wrong cable.

I can't think of anything else that could be causing what you're seeing.

Could you post a picture of your consumer unit(s) and the cabling around them?

Thanks so much for replying again!

I will take some pics tomorrow!

The Netthings energy monitor is an internal thing. It only connects (via wires) to the consumer unit and shows me gas and electricity usage in real time.

It does not have any connection to the smets1. It is not an IHD. So I guess my wiring does not even have CT clamp.?

All the wiring is hidden and I don’t want to start messing around taking off the face plate of the consumer unit etc. I am not sure if this is helpful at all but here is the pictures.

Thanks in advance for your reply!

Hey @bcs009,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community.

It’s great to see you’ve already met our community member @M.isterW whose given some great advice. I’m wondering if @ArundaleP, @sylm_2000 and @PeterR1947 have any insight here? 

I’d advise contacting the installer directly and seeing if they’ve encountered this issue before. 

You may have already seen these pages as you mentioned you’ve been checking forums for a few weeks, but if not we have some similar threads and a great guide which may be helpful: 

• Solar Photovoltaic (pv) panels: Installation, apps, export payments and ROI - User guide Tutorial

• OVO usage doesn't match solar PV system consumption data - why?

Keep us posted with how you get on! 

Anyone here could refer a company/person who could come on-site and check the wiring?

I did try but the original installer company just ignores me at this point…

I am based in Fleet, Hampshire.

I’ve read a couple of posts with the same sort of issue and at the end it always comes down to wrong wiring.

We moved in 5 years ago. New built. Now that the energy prices are sky high I started to look what my solar is doing and I am very disappointed to realise that I have not benefited from them at all since we moved in.

Hey @M.isterW,

Sorry to hear you’ve had no luck with the original installer.

Are you able to help with this one? @Transparent do you have any suggestions?

You could try this site to find a registered electrician. 

Keep us posted with how you get on!

I did take the front off the panels so here is the full wiring.

I did test the voltage is kinda high, can it be that the voltage from the grid is higher than the voltage of the pv inverter hence it does not get used.? I have a growatt 1000s mini so it is a very small and old model.

Could this be sorted with a voltage optimiser or new inverter.? I am pretty sure at this point that the meter and wiring is fine and this is the real issue here.?

Hey @bcs009,

Thanks for posting those photos.

@M.isterW Do these help? Hopefully we can get to the bottom of this one!

Thank you all!

The CT Clamp was loose hence my energy monitor was recording less energy.

The daily difference in KW between my energy monitor and the meter was roughly the same as my solars were generating in a day.

Thats why I was so confused. I did tighten the clamp with a zip tie (the bit where you can clip the clamp together was worn out, its visible on the pics if you look closer) and its all good.

Smart monitor and meter matching almost exactly now.

Thanks again!