Energy Monitoring

We’re well into the first summer season of having solar panels. It’s been a good experience, with the system generating lots of electricity when the sun is shining.

The dashboard and app that we have for our solar only covers generation, not consumption. While it’s great in theory to know that we’re generating more than we’re using, the only evidence of that is in our ENMAX bill. There’s a section that shows how much we’ve consumed vs. generated.

This is good, but it’s a trailing indicator. This is our June bill, and the cutoff was in mid-May, and it’s July now. How much did we sell in June? How about last week? Or today?

My friend and co-worker Steven was interested in solar and when I went through the process, he followed suit. Of course, he started a year later, which meant that he… almost started generating significant electricity the same time I did. We got a winter of low production and then just were getting into the long days when his came online. He didn’t have to wait for the parts nearly as long as we did, thanks to his later start. Apparently the big rush for the Greener Homes Grant was over by that time, too, because he didn’t have to wait as long for any of the steps.

One of the options that one of the solar contractors offered him was a panel monitoring kit. For $900 extra, he could monitor the energy consumption and what he was sending back into the grid. Steven being Steven, he found the same kit on Amazon and installed it himself, for $150. It’s regularly $200, and I waited until Prime Day and then ordered it for the same $150. It was a bit of an endeavour to install, but it’s working. Tammy and I did it last night. I suppose it would have only been about an hour and a half, except for an app that refused to work right.

The basic idea is it puts sensors on up to eight of the wires coming out of the breakers. They measure the amps flowing on the line and the central unit collects the data and transmits it over Wi-Fi. The big ones at the top measure the electricity coming in on the main, i.e. the energy flow from ENMAX.

Of course, the schematic doesn’t really do the actual wiring justice:

It’s all hidden away behind the panel, but the next person going in there is going to freak out. I’m guessing that will be an electrician putting in a new circuit for electric vehicle charging, but who can foresee the future?

We had to wait until morning when the sun came up to see if the solar measuring was working, and it was.

As I write this, the sun has come up more, and we’re using 850 W, generating 750 W and drawing 100 W from ENMAX. Soon it will tip over and more will flow back into the grid. Tammy’s in the bonus room doing Apple Fitness with the TV on, and I’m at my desk. Various computers and appliances are on. We kicked on the dryer last night just to test, and it immediately jumped to be almost 100% of the total.

Now instead of waiting two months to see how we’re doing, I can watch it in near-real time.

Notes:

• I expected the power for this thing to be an AC adaptor brick. Turns out, it needed to be wired into the panel. That was the only real stressful part.
• I had to turn off the main breaker for safety. That’s the first time I’d ever done that.
• I also pulled the circuit cutoff from the roof outside. Can’t forget that!
• The instructions said to find a spot inside the panel for the monitoring unit. Seemed fine until I actually had to manage the cables. It’s a mess, but I’m not sure what the solution is. Good thing I didn’t get the kit with 16 sensors instead of 8.
• Connecting to Wi-Fi was the longest and most stressful step. The companion app would just there for 10 minutes or more before telling me it couldn’t connect. I read on the vendor’s website that this is a common issue and they suggested force-quitting the app. I did that, and then it connected right away. That’s about an hour of my life I’ll never get back.
• Speaking of frustrating, the app walked us through the entire installation process, and we got to the point where we had to enter what each of the sensors was measuring. We’d put tape labels on each lead, and we entered the information. But then it said “take a photo of the panel before closing it, in case you need technical support” (see photo above). But when I switched back to the app after taking the picture and re-installing the panel, the app had reset itself and forgotten all the information we entered. I had to take the panel back off and read all the labels out to Tammy, who wrote them down on a sticky note this time. It did this one more time before the end. So I ended up entering the information three times.