First up, I think I have a pretty straight forward electrical set-up. In North America - have power coming in from the grid feeding an electrical panel. I also have a 13kW solar array that feeds into the panel as well.
Previously I was using the Emporia Vue. I switched to take advantage of the non-cloud access to data - and to integrate into Home Assistant. Here is what I’d like to output -
Total Usage - what my house power needs are
Net Usage - what my power company will read at the meter
Solar power - what my panels are producing
the next 2 are little trickier I think
In From the Grid - grid power used (can be positive even if net usage is negative)
Out to the Grid - power exported to the grid (can be positive even if net usage is positive)
The first step is setting up my CT sensors - here is my current set up - my big question is when should I use ‘allow negative’?
I know overeasy recommends PVoutput - and I have no problem using them - but I was hoping to set up the data on Iotawatt to then send to Home Assistant.
I’ll take a closer look at the problem tomorrow, but wanted to say that PVoutput is an inexpensive low overhead way to track all things solar, and there is Home Assistant integration for it. So it may be easiest to simply get the solar import and export via PVoutput.
On the mains because they will be negative when you produce more power than you use.
Be sure your solar has double checked. In the status above you are using 7,130 Watts (mains + solar). You are measuring usage of 6,135 so there is 995 Watts being used elsewhere.
I question you water-heater at 338W with PF .96. Is that a heat-pump water heater?
For the solar import and export, I’m still looking at how that works directly with HA. Maybe someone more familiar can help with that.
Thanks for the help! I did manage to set up a PVoutput account using the docs here.
And yes, that is a heat pump water heater. I do have the solar checked for double. As for the extra electric usage - I have a server rack setup, 2 fridges, and dehumidifier running - which would account for at least half of the missing power.
I look forward to any more info you can give in regards to the Home Assistant tie in - I already have it set up as a sensor within HA - just need to sort the math out on this end with my outputs.
I have a somewhat similar setup to yourself except i am in Australia - this is what has worked for me
We have 3 phase so i have a decidated IOTWATT for my main meterboard panels - where the grid comes in from the street
Into this same board we have our 3 phase solar input
From this same board i go out 3 phase to what we call a distribution board where all my house loads are.
So i have 3 clamps on the 3 phases in from the street
3 clamps on the input from the solar
3 clamps on the output to the house
(3 in reserve for when i shortly bring my battery system on board)
Here is a picture of the main screen - 5pm in Sydney in WInter so no solar left
And one of my solar inputs as the inverters can suck power overnight
This basically works for me in Node Red as when i am feeding excess Solar to the grid i see the negative values in my dashboard whilst still seeing the +ve values for consumption from my main switchboard.
I know this post is a little old but what did you end up doing?
I have a similar setup and have done this and it appears to be working correctly (after some tweaking). I haven’t done an ‘import’ / ‘export’ and might not for now…
Here is what I have. I wanted to mirror my old TED with load, net and generation (solar) graphing and data. I found that if I didn’t have the generation(abs) in there, it would just add all the numbers which is what I didn’t want. Does this seem right? Is there a better way to do this?
Your basic setup doesn’t look right. You are referencing an old post with three-phase. Do you have three-phase? Your mains power factors are very low suggesting that you may have your basic configuration wrong.
I’d suggest that you start from scratch to review your installation. Solar inverters typically feed in at near unity power factor (1.00). You appear to be exporting 171 Watts of the 306 Watts produced by your inverter, yet the power factor for those exports are .24 and .34. That’s hard to do.
Also, how did you produce the screenshot with only Outputs? The standard app combines both Inputs and Outputs into one tab, as in your first screenshot.
From that screenshot I would be using 135 Watts (306W-171W). Which seems right as we don’t usually have a high constant load. I still have my TED connected and when I take a snapshot of both they are within about 8 Watts of each other.
So I don’t know if this matters but I have micro-inverters on each of my solar panels that feed into a sub panel that then goes to the main panel. In the main panel, there is 1 CT that is doubled (for solar). Many years ago one of the panels was only producing about 2/3 of what it was rated for. It is still tied in, but since then, I can no longer see any solar panel data. I am wondering if that would be causing ‘noise’ to where the monitor can’t read anything from any of the panels. Do you think that would that cause a pf issue as well?
That looks OK. Not clear on whether that lower PF is right with micro-inverters. Most of the installs with single string inverters have very high PFs. It’s also not a lot of generation, so maybe they get more efficient when the output is greater?
The previous posts referenced both PVoutput and Home Assistant. The docs have info on setting those up. For PVoutput its just a matter of sending what you already have. For Home Assistant, you should setup an integrator for your grid to collect import/export data. It’s in the docs.
BTW/ by convention most PV users setup their IoTaWatt so the Solar generation is positive. I see that you have the “reverse” checked for that CT. You might want to consider unchecking that.
I have the grid feeding the main electrical panel and have solar that feeds into the panel as well. I was trying out a few things and maybe I’m over thinking my output formulas… I’m open to suggestions to clean up what I have or to change the wording to make more sense (I’ve used load, net and solar/generation and will change to what the ‘standard’ wording is). Here is what I would like for my outputs (which I think are right):
-solar generation (it uses a few watts at night so I want to show that as usage, that’s why I have it set to reverse and show negative when generating)
-load (how much is used in the house including usage from solar) [if I don’t add the abs at the end, it doesn’t show the total load]
-net usage (how much is used in the house minus solar or what is going to/from the grid)
