Defective Solar System Installation

[Maelly]

What provider is that?

you mean the electricity bill - impact meters

 

[Lupus]

you mean the electricity bill - impact meters

A third party? So it's not the actual municipality? Can you read the meter yourself and confirm their numbers?

 

[TheChamp]

A third party? So it's not the actual municipality? Can you read the meter yourself and confirm their numbers?

And it took us this long to arrive here? I was wondering which municipality was it that actually took time to do a site meeting with a solar company and put the interest of the client first, I wanted to move there.

 

[Lupus]

And it took us this long to arrive here? I was wondering which municipality was it that actually took time to do a site meeting with a solar company and put the interest of the client first, I wanted to move there.

I deal with users all the time where I need to drag info out of them, it's like yes I know we developed that workflow for you, but I've done 100s over the years, we don't know them backwards. Sometimes you need to just keep asking questions to get what you need.

 

[Neuk_]

Municipality bill is one-two months or so, behind. So, here's a decent example in November for illustration purposes:

Solar: 196.82 grid consumption Vs Bill: 849

I see meter readings on there so can only assume the bill is not an estimate, have you checked your meter to confirm the readings are accurate? If I recall correctly your oven and geyser are not on the critical side of the inverter?

 

[Neuk_]

I deal with users all the time where I need to drag info out of them, it's like yes I know we developed that workflow for you, but I've done 100s over the years, we don't know them backwards. Sometimes you need to just keep asking questions to get what you need.

Every.
Damn
Day.

Even if you are intimately knowledgeable about a system ,workflow, process, etc. there will be some things you simply cannot know the most important is what a user actually did. They will always say, the system did this or that but never tell you what they did or didn't do which almost always has an impact.

 

[Maelly]

A third party? So it's not the actual municipality? Can you read the meter yourself and confirm their numbers?

My bad.
Yes you may. This was also done when they came to run diagnostics earlier.

And I have also requested and received meter readings pictures - so nothing untoward there. Well, at least as far as I can tell.

The issue remains this supposedly grid feed-in.
Impact meters ran the tests and demonstrated small (like minute) feed in and attributes that to "bill interference" and hence grid usage only. I don't know all of that stuff, hence I also had the Service provider technician available (to do tests on the system) - and he didn't argue much against that finding.
All this leading to the re-installation as outlined earlier. We are back here

 

[Neuk_]

My bad.
Yes you may. This was also done when they came to run diagnostics earlier.

And I have also requested and received meter readings pictures - so nothing untoward there. Well, at least as far as I can tell.

The issue remains this supposedly grid feed-in.
Impact meters ran the tests and demonstrated small (like minute) feed in and attributes that to "bill interference" and hence grid usage only. I don't know all of that stuff, hence I also had the Service provider technician available (to do tests on the system) - and he didn't argue much against that finding.
All this leading to the re-installation as outlined earlier. We are back here

This...

Solar: 196.82 grid consumption Vs Bill: 849

...cannot be attributed to 'minute feed in'

 

[Lupus]

My bad.
Yes you may. This was also done when they came to run diagnostics earlier.

And I have also requested and received meter readings pictures - so nothing untoward there. Well, at least as far as I can tell.

The issue remains this supposedly grid feed-in.
Impact meters ran the tests and demonstrated small (like minute) feed in and attributes that to "bill interference" and hence grid usage only. I don't know all of that stuff, hence I also had the Service provider technician available (to do tests on the system) - and he didn't argue much against that finding.
All this leading to the re-installation as outlined earlier. We are back here

Have you not gone to check the meter yourself? Also are you in a complex? As having a third party generally means either you're renting or in a complex.

 

[Maelly]

Here we go:
Complex.

290sqm double storey house (typical power usage - in case you were wondering).

Not renting (I have a bond).

Whilst you can't just walk and open the meter boxes - it's locked (but can access this whenever they come to do the readings or just make arrangements. They're usually around the complex most of the time for whatever support required).

What else I missed?

 

[Lupus]

Here we go:
Complex.

290sqm double storey house (typical power usage - in case you were wondering).

Not renting (I have a bond).

Whilst you can't just walk and open the meter boxes - it's locked (but can access this whenever they come to do the readings or just make arrangements. They're usually around the complex most of the time for whatever support required).

What else I missed?

You know you could've supplied all of this info in the very first post right . It's a third party due to living in a complex.
Minute feed won't cause that amount of high usage, but anyway hopefully it's been resolved with the installer and your supplier.
Honestly the installer could've been more at fault on install, but it took you three years to bring it up to them.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Ok stop trolling
The issue is not the ability to generate power. So, the size of the system installed has nothing to do with anything.
I mentioned 5kw hybrid inverter because that was the question asked - yes also has a 5Kw Hubble battery. What's the next question - how many panels I have? No - the size of the system is NOT the issue at hand!

Of course I can do manual configurations on the inverter and also on the web portal. I can play around with battery settings, including customising the % etc. safety , balanced, economical, etc. - I just leave it on the recommend setting by the Service provider in case they say my settings were not optimal. Again This is NOT the issue at hand!

The highest power generation that I've observed was a 4Kw solar production, 0.02Kw grid usage, 4.55kw house consumption and a 0.88Kw battery usage sitting at 96% full!

It has been established (Service provider and Municipality) that all my usage is deemed grid.
Yes! This is crazy because, 1) I can manually switch off the Inverter to Eskom bypass to either Solar only (no Eskom) - and I will still have power in the house or 2) even when there's power failure around - I will still have power (in fact in most cases I don't even see that there's power failure unless you go out, i.e., street lights, traffic lights etc. - or on the Complex WhatsApp group asking whether there's power failure), and even 3) back during loadsheding - I mostly had power unless loadsheding runs for over 6 hours or something.
So - no problem with power generation, inverter and battery, etc. None!

I can also monitor the system through mobile apps (one of which is Solarman Smart) - no problem here.

It is just bizarre that the supposed "grid feed-in" is being singled out by the municipality as a culprit.
The Service provider did not contest this (I thought they would have) - instead they chose to do the re-installation - a full and complete re-wiring including changing my DB box - new switches etc.!

So, I don't need to be posting pictures here - that's not the issue!

Now - what else? And stop strolling

There is always a minor bit of grid feed-in (like <0.5 kWh) per month and this is intentional to stop the meters thinking they are being tampered with...and the municipality should know this as it's for their benefit.

 

[Lupus]

There is always a minor bit of grid feed-in (like <0.5 kWh) per month and this is intentional to stop the meters thinking they are being tampered with...and the municipality should know this as it's for their benefit.

No there isn't, I don't have any minor grid feed-in and my meter is fine. To prevent the meter from thinking it's being tampered with some people set a 20w draw from the grid.

 

[TheChamp]

I guess it doesn't matter since you have decided to terminate the contract, but another solution would have been to totally isolate some of the circuits to be off grid, as in feeding directly from solar, with utility only acting as a backup when you need it, which is what the re-wiring could have been about.

 

[Neuk_]

There is always a minor bit of grid feed-in (like <0.5 kWh) per month and this is intentional to stop the meters thinking they are being tampered with...and the municipality should know this as it's for their benefit.

Do you mean grid pull? I think you are referring to the 20W or so that the inverter always pulls from the grid to prevent feed in...

 

[SauRoNZA]

This...

Solar: 196.82 grid consumption Vs Bill: 849

...cannot be attributed to 'minute feed in'

But the entire house isn't on the inverter.

So it's probably the geyser/stove/oven/other.

 

[Neuk_]

But the entire house isn't on the inverter.

So it's probably the geyser/stove/oven/other.

Potentially, but assuming the figures supplied are correct and for the same period, 652kWh on an oven and a geyser is a massive amount of electricity, not sure what else is not on the inverter.

 

[wingnut771]

I deal with users all the time where I need to drag info out of them, it's like yes I know we developed that workflow for you, but I've done 100s over the years, we don't know them backwards. Sometimes you need to just keep asking questions to get what you need.

Why I said to walk away.

 

[Neuk_]

Why I said to walk away.

And miss out on discussing electric geyser use as energy storage, never!

 

[SauRoNZA]

No there isn't, I don't have any minor grid feed-in and my meter is fine. To prevent the meter from thinking it's being tampered with some people set a 20w draw from the grid.

Do you mean grid pull? I think you are referring to the 20W or so that the inverter always pulls from the grid to prevent feed in...

My bad, yes I flipped it around.

But I've always had tiny amount grid export every month since I first got my system installed. But like 300 watts a month.