Dencor 'load controller' display read-out

[SilverLEAF]

I have a Dencor Model D-82 Data Display Station. One option (option 3) is to display 'instant kw load'. I thought it was displaying kw load provided by power company. However, on a rare recent cloudy day, the display fluctuated widely as the clouds passed over my panels. Could the load controller display actually be displaying the 'net' usage?

It has no indicator of + or -, regarding load (it was installed 20 years before I installed solar), but could conceivably by displaying net kw instant load.

Do any of our folks know how a device such as this would work in a home with a smart, bidirectional meter?

My home is equipted with a load controller and the display works with the load controller.

[Naptown]

If it is placed on the panel before the main breaker and you were using power in the house it may be reading the net power coming from the utility.
Solar would reduce the load on the grid and a fluctuating reading on a partly cloudy day would be a result of varying power the solar is producing.
Say you had a 5 KW load that was pretty stable.
Your array is producing 2 KW in the sun
The meter would read 3 KW
Sun behind a cloud and the reading will go up to almost 5KW.
It depends on where the meter is reading the current.

[inetdog]

I have a Dencor Model D-82 Data Display Station. One option (option 3) is to display 'instant kw load'. I thought it was displaying kw load provided by power company. However, on a rare recent cloudy day, the display fluctuated widely as the clouds passed over my panels. Could the load controller display actually be displaying the 'net' usage?

It has no indicator of + or -, regarding load (it was installed 20 years before I installed solar), but could conceivably by displaying net kw instant load.

Do any of our folks know how a device such as this would work in a home with a smart, bidirectional meter?

My home is equipted with a load controller and the display works with the load controller.

Does the Dencor have the ability to display anything when you are net selling back to the grid? If it does, then you may be seeing it reading the amount that you are sending back to the grid when the PV power is greater than your load. When a cloud passes over, that number should then go down (and maybe even hit zero and start back up again as it starts displaying the number for power in rather than power out.)

If it is reading the power you are feeding to the grid, make sure you do not size your PV system so large that it sees you selling too much and tries to reduce it by shedding load. It will have a hard time with that.

This could actually be a problem if you have both time-of-use and tiered usage pricing.

[SilverLEAF]

I spoke to a tech at Dencor, and he indicated that the reading would be the COMBINED used and generated. If I am using 5 and generating 5, it would show 10. If the sun passed behind a cloud, I would see the value become lower. They were really helpful, as were you folks! Thanks.