I am looking at the L2 value of -80 Watts with a pf of 0.17. That doesn’t look right, but now as I look closely at your diagram, I see those CTs are on the SolarEdge (SE) cables. I don’t know much about that system with battery, so I’ll reserve judgement until you put CTs on the main line somewhere as suggested and I see the results.
I’m assuming theSE CTs are on the main incoming cables upstream from where the inverter connects, and that it monitors grid power usage so that it will divert PV power to the battery rather than export power to the grid. If I have that wrong, please advise.
You want to understand what the SE is doing. To determine how well it is managing energy using the IoTaWatt, I would suggest you reconfigure to the first option, at least initially, so you can see and plot exactly what is happening.
Just saying, you can’t get consistently accurate results with two different phases in one CT, regardless of the voltage/phase that you use. Prese_PTP1 and Luci_PTP1 cannot be right with a reference of phase B-C. With derived reference and a phase-to-neutral load, the phase can only be A, B or C. While you may have found complementary errors with the phase shift and power factor of your load that approximates what you feel is correct, it will not yield consistently correct results.
OK that is because of the battery and it’s the reason why I need to investigate - I have 2 batteries, one is on L2 the other on L3. The system is using what we call ‘local exchange method’: in short the grid meter do 2 ways measure and doesn’t really matter if you are consuming on a phase and feeding on another until the balance is zero. With that in mind the SE system will feed on the phase where it has a battery even if the load is on another phase. Make sense now?
That might be the reason why the number won’t look reasonable at first sight - I’m really sure all the CT are using the same side and they are on the right phase. Probably the output is not 0 (I named it ENEL in my screen and it’s the sum of L1+L2+L3) because the CT on L3 (A) is not properly cabled or I damaged it during the installation.
Once I’m done with investigating with SE I’ll move those CT to the EV charger as you advised.
I see, will move the loads on the same phase and provide a new screenshot - Thanks!
I understand the concept of net import/export through the meter. I would expect it to work that way, and other users have described the same situation. (Some have limiting inverters because they say they are actually charged for net export).
I’m sure it’s just a miscommunication, but the line diagram shows L1, L2 and L3 on the feed wires from the inverter (and batteries I presume). With that in mind, I can see how L1 and L2 show negative (exporting), but I don’t understand where the 1,879 Watts imported on L3 is going. Is that charging a battery? Have you moved the CTs to the main incoming lines?
I did ask before if the CTs connected to the SE monitor were on the main incoming lines. I don’t see how they could be producing the data in their display if not. Can you verify that?
The snapshots of IW and SE status are close, but to reconcile it would be better to look at kWh over the same time period.
there is only one main incoming line - shown below. This is where IW has its CT and SE as well. On the same lines there is also the production inverter (a 9Kwh), behind it there are the two batteries (each with a front-end 5Kwh inverter).
The behavior you have seen and that is rising doubts is exactly the reason why (or one of) I bought IW to investigate. What I found out - and I have a case escalated to SE since 3 months - is that the production inverter (9kw) has a limit on its load per phase: it’s 3kw per phase. So when you turn on 6kw (e.g.) of loads, the inverter cannot keep it up - it will ask the grid to cover it while exporting the same aggregate amount on the other phases: this way with the “exchange in place” the aggregate will be 0 and you won’t be charged by the grid.
The reasons why my investigation started is that I kept having disconnection from the grid because I was going over the power limit on a single phase. This happened only during peak production (9kwh) and while I had load well below my contracted power limit (6kw). It’s 3 months we are trying to find out why and I discovered it thanks to IW.
The inverter is unbalancing the phases to recover its peak power limitations.
