Dillsue

The export meter is the house meter that belongs to the DNO. If its smart it measures electric coming into the house(import) that you pay for and measures electric leaving the house(export) that you could get paid for under SEG. This meter is nothing to do with your PV or MCS installer.

A few observations... If youve got 2.4kwp and make even the smallest effort to self consume, youre not likely to be exporting much so is it worth paying the premium for an MCS install? Youll be paying a premium and maybe constrained in how you configure things Not sure what inverter youre using but ours gives a readout of generation by day, week and total since install so you may not need a generation meter if the inverter gives that info. I cant see what the issue is with connecting into the garage CU. Weve got several consumer units all fed from the same incoming service fuse/meter and our MCS installers were quite happy to feed into one which wasnt nearest the incoming supply. They just fitted the dual supply warning labels to the other CUs

In the installers email to you with the projected generation figures, he says you can compare the projected figures to those on the solar generation meter. That suggests youve got a generation meter?? That meter is exactly what you need to be looking at to see how your system is performing!

If the smart meter you are talking about is the main household meter, then no its not the generation meter. The household meter records the electricity coming in and out of the house. Theres a figure of 2.5kwh that you are getting from your Eddi. If that figure is actually KWH rather than KW its not a snap shot of what the panels are generating at the time you look at the Eddi. The intantaneous generation figures will be in W or KW like the figure of 1617W shown on your inverter display. 1617W(1.617KW) is the actual generation at that moment in time(10 17?) whereas the 2.5KWH is the quantity of electricity generated over a period of time. Is the 2.5 figure KWH or KW? I dont know your inverter but the solaredge inverters we have have a cumulative total generation figure in them so you can read the total generation from since installation dirdct from the inverter. It may be worth having a look to see if you can get that figure from your inverter. That figure will be much more representative of how your system is performing than looking at random snapshot figures.

The OP says he collected all the serial numbers so adding the necessary gateway and setting up web monitoring should be doable, but... If theres a generation meter its easy enough to see if the annual generation aligns with the 4700kwh forecast provided by the installer. Depending on orientation the installers forecast aligns with PVGIS forecast for Bristol. @Dan. Is there a generation meter and have you got the last few years figures??

The sun is low where your tree is to the south east of an array in the winter when generation is at its lowest so shading will have little impact. In late spring, summer and early autumn the sun is fairly high to the south east of an array when generation is at its highest so shading has a greater impact. Without details its impossible to know how shading may affect your generation but its unlikely to be insignificant if your installer has raised it as an issue and advised to fit optimisers. We have 75% of our PV facing SE and a tree opposite that array would undoubtedly cut our production If youre drawing a blank with local experts willing to check out your system, seems that online forum support would be a great second choice to shed some light on your issue(s).

I think the TAP and CCA are required to get full functionality of monitoring and shutdown. If the TAP and CCA were required for optimisation, the OP wouldnt have any generation atall??

Ive no hands on experience with Tigo optimisers, but AFAIK you dont need a gateway/TAP for them to optimise panel generation?? Happy to be corrected but I thought the gateway/TAP/CCA were all to allow remote monitoring and some other enhanced functions, other than power generation?? Remote monitoring would be an absolute god send for the OP!!

Just realised that you said in your first post that the panels were "shade free" yet the installer makes allowance for shading and specifically refers to a tree shading the array????????

With 6.2 kw of panels they will only generate a peak of 6.2kw of energy under standard conditions. You have a 6.2kwp system where the potential peak power is 6.2kwp. Youll only likely achive this if ALL the panels are square on to the sun around midday in the height of summer, unshaded. If the panels are dirty, part shaded, at the wrong angle, split so they are facing different directions, they wont ever generate 6.2kw. Having optimisers helps with overall production but it wont make a panel or panels generate as normal if they are shaded/dirty. With a system not fitted with optimisers(or micro inverters) if one panel is shaded/dirty it reduces the generation of all the panels. With optimisers only the shaded/dirty panels reduce in output whilst the remaining panels produce as normal so overall system production is increased compared to a system without optimisers. If youve got a tree/trees shading some panels then youre not going to see 6.2kw. You say that something never "fuses" when the circuit with the inverter is switched off. Why is that circuit switched off as it should be on all the time. What is it that "fuses" when the circuit is on? Does the unit that fuses have a test button on the front of it? Do you know how much you generate each month and how does that compare to the figures in the forecasts you posted?

First off, how long ago was the system installed and was it a receipted job or cash? Exactly what was your involvement when you say "I installed the panels"? Did that include wiring or just mechanical? Basically, what was the installer contracted to do? Given you seem to have several problems your easiest course of action may be to go back to the original installer if the circumstances allow, progressing it to the money claim service if necessary. If you installed the panels do you know what wattage they were and how they were wired- series, parallel, single or multiple strings, optimsers etc?

If you want to maximise generation but stick within the 16amp DNO limit, some/many inverters allow connection of a much higher output array than the inverters rating. As an example a solaredge SE3680H is clamped at a max 16amp AC output but can have up to 5.7kw of panels connected to it. Although therell be some wasteage of potential generation on sunny summer days, the system will produce more when condition/season isnt so favourable.

Your ASHP is likely the biggest load but used at a time when youre generating the least. PV is not likely to make much of a space heating contribution in the winter, unless you have a big array. If you want the best self consumption put everything on the same phase and stagger your demand over peak generation hours with anything left going through your diverter.

If youre sure theres no shading then thats a consideration but how do you stop neighbours trees growing, passing clouds, seagull s**t, a bit of algal growth one end of the array, all contributing to shading in varying degrees. All I can say is that our SE system has significantly beat the forecast generation every year since weve had them despite us having some chimney shading that wasnt considered in the forecast figure?

The optimisers have serial numbers and you log the postion of each serial number during install then upload it to solaredge and they replicate the layout on their web site. The inverter collects generation data from each optimiser and passes it to the web site where its displayed. I assume the inverter communicates using the serial numbers as theres no manual addressing to be done. Its all done over the DC cabling. All clever and useful stuff

Theres data transfer between the inverter and the optimisers to gather status and generation info for each module/optimiser so I guess theres also data sent from the inverter to activate the optimisers?? Youre right about optimisers dealing with shading that may otherwise pull down the output of the entire string, but they will also help if one module is dirty say with the output from a seagull, or theres a film of dirt over one end of the array, or a module is faulty. Another big benefit is the module level monitoring you get via the solaredge web site. We had a module embedded optimiser fail a couple of years ago and without the monitoring feature it may have taken years to spot the small drop in output. Even if we had spotted it, without the monitoring fault finding would have meant lifting individual modules to find the duff one, potentially 16 modules being lifted!! Im a big fan of SE:)

I think I would need 7 of them to power the minimum of 8 optimisers incl one optimiser powered by the panel I have. A bit of research reveals solaredge produce a unit to disable the safe 1vdc output so the optimisers can be connected to non solaredge inverters. It maybe possible to test individual optimisers this way but Id need to buy the disabling tool and then buy another inverter that would accept the low input from a single optimiser, if such a thing exists. Probably going to leave the testing until I buy the panels and take the chance Ive not been sold a set of duff units!!

I think your right and more panels are needed. Wasnt planning on buying the panels just yet but might have to rethink!! Thanks for all the replies

Will check that, as coupled with being able to pair with the inverter it gives a bit more confidence but would ideally like to see some power coming through them.

The inverter datasheet gives a max input of 500vdc, a nominal input of 350vdc but no minimum. The optimisers output is max 60vdc, so way short of 350 and I guess thats the reason for needing a minimum of 8 on a string. Just trying to see if theres another way to test without buying another 7 panels.

Hi. Has anyone any experience of optimiser testing? Ive picked up 10 unused but "shop soiled" P350s off ebay and want to check they are all good before installing on the roof. Ive got a 4kw solar edge inverter and a single 245w solar panel. I can get individual optimisers to pair with the inverter when the panel is connected and powering the optimiser but I dont see any generation after pairing. The data sheet says each string should have a minimum of 8 optimisers so I assume this is the problem. I dont have access to 8 panels at the moment so am wondering if theres any other way to fully test them??