Electric Usage in direct proportion to generation

[soleremy]

Something strange seems to be going on as I track my solar usage. It seems that when my system is producing the most electricity I am also consuming the most electricity. This happens with no Air Conditioning, and will even happen when I am on vacation. I have attached a screenshot of my production/usage where production are the green bars and usage is blue. You can clearly see toward the middle of the day, typically when I am not even home the more I produce the more I consume. This happens every day.

Does anyone have any ideas what may be causing this?

[jflorey2]

Does anyone have any ideas what may be causing this?

What system are you using to monitor your usage? Some cannot tell the difference between export and import, and report generation as use.

[soleremy]

It is Sunpower's proprietary system. If it was reporting generation as use wouldn't my usage always be higher than my generation?

[ButchDeal]

It is Sunpower's proprietary system. If it was reporting generation as use wouldn't my usage always be higher than my generation?

It does not appear to be configured properly. likely one of the CTs is backwards or more likely it is configured incorrectly in the monitoring screen.

[Ampster]

Something similar happens with my non export inverter but in that case it only produces what the batteries and the loads can take. I think the explanation of jflorey2 or ButchDeal probably makes more sense. I assume it doesn't have batteries. Is it a new system?

[foo1bar]

It is Sunpower's proprietary system. If it was reporting generation as use wouldn't my usage always be higher than my generation?

Someone else had similar issue recently on this board.
They had the typical residential US 110V/220V service - so two "hot" wires.
They found the CTs for monitoring usage were setup wrong.
One CT was measuring both usage and generation.
The other CT was measuring just usage.

Looking a tthe graph I think during peak generation your usage is about half your generation.
So I would bet you have similar issue - one of the two CTs is measuring generation and reporting it as usage.
And probably the other CT is measuring actual usage, so you still see some usage reported at 11PM

[soleremy]

foo1bar, I think you may have hit the nail on the head here. Going to wait for my Electric bill and if things don't match up I will mention to my installer. Will try and update this thread once I know for sure.

[jflorey2]

It is Sunpower's proprietary system. If it was reporting generation as use wouldn't my usage always be higher than my generation?

No. Your reported usage would be generation minus actual use. If you are generating 5000 watts, and using 1000, you would see a "reported" load of 4000 if you put the CT in the wrong place, or if the system was configured wrong.

[foo1bar]

Going to wait for my Electric bill and if things don't match up I will mention to my installer. Will try and update this thread once I know for sure.

I wouldn't wait. Not unless the electric bill is coming this week anyhow.
It's obviously wrong.

Call them up and let them know what you're seeing. (they can probably see it too - I'm assuming this is a website and it probably has a way to access for the installers too)

Tell them that this isn't an urgent thing, but it's obviously wrong so you'd like them to fix it.

If I were the installing company owner/manager I'd want to know sooner rather than later that one of my crew made a mistake.
(especially since I'd then be double checking on every subsequent install by the people that were working on your job)