New solar panels notification

Hey ​@jtleavesley 

Welcome to the OVO Online Community. I have added green tech badges to your account so other community members with the same green tech can identify you 🙂

Just wanted to loop in ​@BPLightlog  ​@juliamc ​@mavison & ​@hydrosam as they might have some helpful advice for you. 

These topics might be helpful for you:

• The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) - Getting paid for the energy you export to the grid - FAQs Tutorial

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Hi ​@jtleavesley , the monitor for virtually every solar PV system uses a CT to measure home load (and usage) . Unfortunately, this is often not that accurate and therefore as long as your IHD and meter are connected and sending readings, that will be the accurate measurement.

There is a scenario that you may want to check, which is, if the CT and connections are made incorrectly, it can make things count solar as grid consumption. That shouldn’t happen but I have seen it on occasions.

Hi ​@jtleavesley Could it be that your Solax app is correctly showing what your inverter/battery circuit is importing from the grid to a) help re-charge your house batteries when the panels aren’t producing enough to do that on their own (maybe at night?), which might be the 8.4 kWh, and b) contribute any excess PV production to your household demand and/or export back to the grid during the day, which might be the 13.17 kWh figure?

The IHD3 consumption figure of 19.15 kWh will be what your house as a whole consumes, not just what your inverter/battery circuit may consume (i.e. buy) from time to time, but including that 8.4 kWh amount of course.

I’m not entirely sure of my ground here, but as ​@BPLightlog says, I would trust the IHD and the household smart meter to show correctly your purchase from the grid.  And of course your PV panels won’t consume anything as such: you mention a 21.57 kWh consumption by the panels, which I take to be their production for the day?? Which I have to say sounds a very respectable figure for this time of year, I think mine might have produced about 7 kWh that day, so I may have totally the wrong end of the stick?

Anyway, best of luck, you’ll really start noticing the PV contribution from now on, as we progress into April…you won’t regret it, and getting battery storage at the same time is definitely the way to go.  Do let us know how you resolve the different data being presented to you by Solax and by your IHD, I’m always willing to learn from others here on the forum…kindest regards

Many thanks BPLightlog and waltyboy

I have emailed OVO direct regarding my query and will post their reply when received. Being a newbie, and taking longer than most to understand the complete picture it will be sometime before it all sinks in. But with help from forum members I’ll surely get here at some point.

Regarding the consumed 21.57kWh this is made up from importing 8.4kWh from the grid and 13.17kWh from solar as shown on screenshot below. The total yield for the day from Solar is 17.7kWh with 13.17kWh to the house and 4.53kWh to the grid. The IHD3 consumption figure of 19.15 kWh is what I will be billed for. So is the consumption to the house add up to 13.17kWH + 19.15kWh = 32.32kWh which seems rather a lot of energy usage for one day.

There are parts of your graph (green and blue, either side of zero) which look like they might be activity to/from the battery. 
So as ​@waltyboy mentioned, there could be parts of your grid input which are on top of true home consumption - but of course your meter (and IHD) will log these as usage.

If there’s another part of your data that shows the battery state of charge (Soc), that might help to make sense of it all. The info from your SolaX system is ‘part of’ the overall picture and so consumption won’t be the two parts added together.

Thankyou BPLightlog - I can see the battery state of charge and will keep reviewing daily data and hopefully the penny will drop one day!

Hi ​@jtleavesley (and ​@BPLightlog, who is much more au fait with this stuff than I am), one thing to be careful about when charging batteries using your panels, although a thoroughly excellent idea in itself, is to watch like a hawk any additional grid charging that automatically occurs when the panels can’t quite cope on their own: typically at night of course, but even at times during the day especially during the winter months when the batteries are getting hit hard anyway and the panels are dark for much of the day.  
 

Have no fear, using batteries to store excess panel production (supplemented by the grid as necessary) is definitely the way to go, although it’s only really started to get routinely adopted in the last few years or so. Plus, as we head out of March now into longer brighter days you’ll really start to see more and more of that lovely PV production. Assuming your panels are in the UK.

Keep us posted on developments as your system really starts to stretch its legs!  Just watch that grid top-up and make sure you control when it occurs….for example a lot of people time it to occur during cheap tariff rates at night, but it would be of little use re-charging your battery at night while the house was busy using your battery storage. What could work for you would be to use your PV panels first and foremost for the house as and when they can contribute, and then any surplus production to go automatically into the batteries to be discharged later for the hours when your panels are unproductive.  I guess that’s one way your system may be designed anyway? And as ​@BPLightlog and you have homed in on, keeping a sharp weather eye on your battery SoC will be paramount, particularly when the seasons, and our own usage habits, are changing in Spring and Autumn. 
 

Solar generation at 17.00 today 27.5kWh which I’m super happy with. The battery is 100% full and the solar is still generating. I would have earned £4 yesterday and £5 today if I could have exported to the grid but I haven’t yet managed to get DNO approval or selected an export tariff yet. Something I will be doing as soon as possible. I’ve tweaked the schedule time for heating my 210l hot water cylinder and that’s made a saving of around £1 yesterday compare to the day before but it was super sunny yesterday which will have helped as the hot water is heated during 11am to 5pm time slot with a couple of hours top up between 5am to 7am in the morning. My electric bill for yesterday was £3.30. I will look to lower this if I can through further tweaks and optimisations. Enjoying the challenge.

Looking into the data - I see that £4 & £5 earnings would have been achieved by utilising a TOU tariff not through exporting back to the grid. I’ll have to spend more time trying to get a better understanding once I’ve switched to an energy provider offering the best ASHP & SEG tariffs. I’m looking at Octopus. Any thoughts?