Power company not accepting production power

[Srrndhound]

It looks to me that this is either a mistake in the CTs placement, or in the programming of which CTs report what..

It may be a moot point now, but just for ref I'll note here a post I made in another discussion about what happens where the L1 and L2 CTs are simply swapped. Had I known I could have done this fix myself I would have -- but my installer did it for me.

[scrambler]

It looks to me that this is either a mistake in the CTs placement, or in the programming of which CTs report what.

If the grid was not accepting power, then the solar production would not happen (or be limited) as power has to go somewhere. The fact you have full solar production curves, mean the grid is taking your solar production surplus (your billing also appear to confirm that).

So it looks like your grid export may be interpreted as Self consumption.

What you need from the installer is an accurate wiring schematic showing the various circuits, the CTs placement, and where they are connected on the Monitoring modules.
And not the theoretical schematic, the actual one on your install, and you should follow it yourself to make sure it is accurate.

[jandrese]

For reference about 2 months after making this post the inverter died outright. My installer replaced the inverter and that solved the problem.

[jandrese]

I'll try that if swapping the Consumption Meter doesn't help, but honestly with how closely the consumption figure tracks the production figure I don't have much hope for that showing me anything useful. I really don't think I have a phantom 10kW load that only appears when the panels are active.

[J.P.M.]

I agree with another poster about shutting down your consumption so you can see what happens with the data.
Just pick a time during the day when you can be without power for an hour or two, and throw the breakers for the house.
Get the car out of the garage, close the garage door, throw all the breakers, go out for a drive / shopping / lunch / whatever, come back 2 hours later, turn everything back on, and see what the data looks like. (And fix all the clocks that need to be fixed.)

FWIW, I've done something similar when I've gone on vacation for periods of 10 days-2 weeks or so by opening all the circuits in the panel except the one controlling the fridge and unplugging/dewiring everything else on that circuit, and then putting a kill-a- watt meter on the fridge. After doing that 4 times I estimate that my system monitor reads somewhere between ~~ 0.0035 and 0.0055 higher than my POCO meter.

[foo1bar]

Oh - and make sure the freezer and fridge are closed tight before you flip the breaker.
You might even want to set them to their coldest settings ~2 hours beforehand.
Or even freeze some extra ice and leave it in the fridge if you're going to be more than 2 hours without power.

[foo1bar]

I agree with another poster about shutting down your consumption so you can see what happens with the data.
Just pick a time during the day when you can be without power for an hour or two, and throw the breakers for the house.
Get the car out of the garage, close the garage door, throw all the breakers, go out for a drive / shopping / lunch / whatever, come back 2 hours later, turn everything back on, and see what the data looks like. (And fix all the clocks that need to be fixed.)

[jandrese]

I didn’t see everything he did, but the tape is still/back on there. He put it up as a safety measure since those lines carry 120vAC.

[oregon_phil]

Thanks for the update. I'm curious, I know the installer confirmed the installation was correct. Did they unwrap the black electricians tape for the L1, L2, N and Ground connections to the energy meter?

[jandrese]

Update: The solar contractor came back and verified that all components of the system were installed correctly. He also called SolarEdge and had them verify the configuration of both the inverter and consumption meter. No configuration issues were found. In the end they decided to try replacing the consumption meter, but none are currently in stock so it will be a couple of weeks before we know if that solves the problem.

[jandrese]

I don't think it is necessarily an indication of a problem to see both production and consumption in the same sample. The meter aggregates data in 15 minute chucks before uploading to the cloud service, so it is possible to have say 8 minutes of production and 7 minutes of consumption in a single sample.

At any rate, I have scheduled an appointment with my installer to come out tomorrow and verify all of the hookups. I will update this thread with any findings for future reference.

[oregon_phil]

The RS485 communication cable is suppose to be shielded.

The AC connections under the black electricians tape starting from the connection closest to you to the wall is : No Connect, L2, L1, Neutral, Ground.

In the three phase model of the consumption meter, the No Connect AC terminal is L3 and the N/A terminal is for CT3.

If the AC wires are not connected correctly, you could have problems. Neutral and ground wires should be traced to make sure they are actually connected.

[oregon_phil]

jandrese . Even when you think the system is operating normally, I don't believe it is operating normally. I have highlighted a section of your May 29th production/consumption.

My interpretation of SolarEdge graph at the highlighted point in time.

Solar production = Green

If all solar production is consumed, then green solar production curve becomes blue (self consumption).

If consumption is larger than solar production, then graph would stack red over blue (see second image that I pulled from google).

For the point highlighted in the attachment, how can the graph show green, blue and red? approximately Red = 4.2kw, green = 3.2kw and blue = 2.3kw.

In other words, there should be no green showing because all of the solar power should be self consumption.

I think your installer needs to verify the installation. There is that big wad of black electricians tape that has the power wires under it..

Maybe the power reported can give us a clue on the solution, but it isn't coming to me right now.

[jandrese]

The strange thing is the third terminal jack is labelled "N/A" where the other two are labelled with the polarity. I had thought maybe the company used the same hardware for all of their consumption meters and adjusted the internals depending on the model.

[solardreamer]

consumption-hookup.jpeg

That consumption meter looks like it has 3 CT connections and you only have 2 CT's connected. Are you sure it's not a 3 phase consumption meter? If it is then the unconnected CT input is floating and could be causing the strangeness you have observed. Some meters can be configured to use only 2 of the 3 inputs so you want want to check that.