Confused about net metering setup

[ben]

Now that I'm done wasting people's time with hunting down breakers, I am back to deciphering my net metering as there is something I'm not understanding. I'll attach several images with setup and data. As my solar generation increases, so does the reading on the channel that I've set to Main (which if I recall is my total consumption).

This data is being generated from MQTT. Legend:
Channel 32 = Main panel
Home Usage = sum of all channels except 32 and 25/27 (solar breakers per my first post)
Solar Gen = sum of 25 and 27
Channel 64 = Channel 32 Gen
Net Usage = (Home Usage - Solar Gen)

The Home Usage and 32 (Main) are equal until my solar production starts. I would have thought that Total Consumption would represent power from the grid and go down as my solar production increases? But instead both 32 (Main) and Total Consumption are increasing as my solar production increases.

Attached is a last 12 hour graph, a last 3 hour graph, and various setup screens.

thanks again.

Set Channel 32 Gen as Main instead of Channel 32. The Gen channels Net Meter, the non-Gen channels don't.

Net Metering done in this way so you can do things like group your two Solar Gen channels with your Channel 32 (non-gen) and it should give you power use (since the Solar Gens will be negative and added to the non-gen Main).

[galvan]

Ok, this is now set. I imagine I'll have to erase the prior data so that the new billing/consumption calculations are correct. Prior to that, should the realtime gauge still look like this? Thanks for your patience Ben!

[ben]

Ok, this is now set. I imagine I'll have to erase the prior data so that the new billing/consumption calculations are correct. Prior to that, should the realtime gauge still look like this? Thanks for your patience Ben!

In the GEM Setup Webpage you may want to toggle polarity on your CH32 so generation shows as a negative, beyond that settings looks right.

Toggling polarity is under Channel Option.

Your Gen gauges will look at bit better if you change the Max gauge value.

[galvan]

Thanks, I think toggling the CH32 polarity did the trick.

Last question for now - it looks like the MQTT frequency is every 60 seconds or so? I'm wondering if there's a way to get a realtime feed, either via MQTT or another method that wouldn't overly stress the box. I was envisioning something like my Davis weather station logger, which has a UDP broadcast of wind/rain every 2.5 seconds.

Thanks again for your help and this product, I wish I had bought this years ago!

[ben]

Thanks, I think toggling the CH32 polarity did the trick.

Last question for now - it looks like the MQTT frequency is every 60 seconds or so? I'm wondering if there's a way to get a realtime feed, either via MQTT or another method that wouldn't overly stress the box. I was envisioning something like my Davis weather station logger, which has a UDP broadcast of wind/rain every 2.5 seconds.

Thanks again for your help and this product, I wish I had bought this years ago!

What are you collecting the MQTT packets with? There may be a better option to feed it data.

[galvan]

I have the Dashbox publishing to a MQTT broker (Paho) on an Ubuntu box. My own Python script processes the incoming MQTT messages and sends them to a monitoring/graphing software.

I did confirm the ~60 second intervals by running tcpdump on the Ubuntu box and looking for all traffic from the Dashbox. Should it be more frequent than that?

[ben]

I have the Dashbox publishing to a MQTT broker (Paho) on an Ubuntu box. My own Python script processes the incoming MQTT messages and sends them to a monitoring/graphing software.

I did confirm the ~60 second intervals by running tcpdump on the Ubuntu box and looking for all traffic from the Dashbox. Should it be more frequent than that?

It sends every minute after the DashBox logs data.

You may be better off using btmon.py and having the DashBox forward the packets to your box, especially given you're already using Python. That'll give you full control over the data. https://github.com/matthewwall/mtools/b ... n/btmon.py

[galvan]

Wow, nice!! I will definitely dive into btmon. Thanks!

[galvan]

So far so good, I've got btmon3.py going, did all my channel mappings and have it publishing to my MQTT broker. I did notice that the net metering channels and total consumption aren't included in the data. I figured I can calculate those on my own, but have some questions..

During the night the channels on my solar panels are reading single digits. At those times the net metering channels are reading the exact same thing. At some point the solar channels read 0 and then start counting up again, at which point the net metering channels go negative. In this pic:
25,27 = solar input
57,59 = solar input gen channels
32 = main
64 = main gen

Is there a certain threshold that gets met until the net metering channels start going negative? (I would think that if the solar panels were truly 0 it would happen at the dead of night, vs shortly after sunrise...

Thanks!

[Teken]

So far so good, I've got btmon3.py going, did all my channel mappings and have it publishing to my MQTT broker. I did notice that the net metering channels and total consumption aren't included in the data. I figured I can calculate those on my own, but have some questions..

During the night the channels on my solar panels are reading single digits. At those times the net metering channels are reading the exact same thing. At some point the solar channels read 0 and then start counting up again, at which point the net metering channels go negative. In this pic:
25,27 = solar input
57,59 = solar input gen channels
32 = main
64 = main gen

Is there a certain threshold that gets met until the net metering channels start going negative? (I would think that if the solar panels were truly 0 it would happen at the dead of night, vs shortly after sunrise...

Thanks!

All solar PV systems have some standby power consumption. So what you see is that power draw.

At 6:16 AM is when power was being generated and cancelling the standby power hence its 0.

Since it’s summer depending upon where you are in the world sun set / sun up happens at different times.

Regardless what’s more important to know is what the power draw is at midnight can you show a period from 12-3:00 AM?

What brand, model , how many solar inverters / micro inverters? This will tell you generally speaking what that standby power will be from the makers specifications.