PV Power Consumed by House Before Meter

[shrowell]

I have just had a 9.9 kW PV system installed, along with a 10 kW SolarEdge inverter and the requisite bidirectional 'net' meter. I was looking at the amount of power received by the electricity company from the house, and was surprised that it was considerably less than the power generated by the PV system, according to the SolarEdge monitoring app. When I asked my installers why this is, I was told that power demands of my house will reduce the amount available to go to the electric company. Is that how these systems are wired (effectively between the inverter and the meter is the feed to the house)?

I am keeping a spreadsheet of usage, so I can track all power generated versus consumed and compare that against my electrical bill in due course, but can someone confirm that my new understanding of the wiring of the PV system is correct?

Many thanks.

Simon

[ButchDeal]

Yes your power in a net meter set up is going to be consumed by any loads in the house first before getting to the meter. Thats why it is NET metering

[Ampster]

If you are in California you should be aware of some other charges. Let us know where you are located and who your power company is in case you have questions about the specifics.

[shrowell]

Thank you for the insight - I am based in Florida (power company is Lee County Electricity Coop (LCEC)).

[sunpoweredev]

I too wondered the same thing within less than a week of my system up and running. Right away I was looking for surplus generation to be credited with by the power company lol, and wondered why SolarEdge was so far off from what the utility meter says (particularly the difference between what my house pulls from the grid and my excess generation into the grid, the surplus that I was after). As you already know, your solar production that you consume doesn't get recorded in your utility meter, and at night you consume whatever surplus you may have accumulated during the day.

I now have a full month of solar generation in my electric billing cycle. I should have about 200kWh of surplus, so my next bill should just be the grid connection charge and the said surplus recorded. Let's see how closely the bill matches up. First time ever I'm looking forward to the electric bill