Hi - the home page of my android app says that our home is 'consuming' 3.11kw (but only fridge, radio, computer on), solar panels generating 3.8kW, battery 100% and 697W being exported.
Doesn't make sense to me...what's happening? how do I export more to the grid?
TIA
davidj
davidj Is this a new installation ? It's possible the CT clamp is misconfigured ?
What sort of GivEnergy system do you have? On my hybrid, it doesn't measure house consumption directly; instead it infers it from what the inverter is generating, and how much is being imported/exported (which it measures through the CT clamp). If it latter is wrong, it would miscalculate the consumption (ie just assume that everything being generated is being consumed.)
Unless you have a solar-aware immersion heater which is soaking up excess power ?
Oh - and is the app showing 'home' or 'away' ? If the latter, it might be old by up to 5 minutes.
Type of system...er 16 panels, 2 generation 3 batteries and inverter, new smart meter, octopus flux tarif, installed last month.
Home and away screen show the same.
If the CT clamp is configured the wrong way around then the consumption and export figures would be inverted. Do you have a smart meter? What does that say?
Tx, but newbie here. What is the CT Clamp? Where and what wouild I look for on my smartmeter? The octopus export app shows an export of 0.12£/kWhand import of about 0.20£/kWh
davidj CT clamp fits around a meter tail and measures the current travelling through it.
There are two in this picture - one around the brown wire top-left, and one around the brown wire above the henley blocks. The arrow on the upper one indicates the direction it should be fitted.
If you have a smart meter then the display (or the app if you have something like an Octopus Home Mini) will show you your real time consumption. If you are exporting then most systems will show a negative import figure.
If it had shown you importing -3.11kW then that would have been a strong indication (likely conclusive indication) that the CT clamp was incorrectly configured and that was confusing the system so it thought your home activity was grid activity and vice versa.
Essentially what the CT clamp is measuring is the flow of energy, so the directionality of that energy is super important as well as the magnitude. If energy is going one way then you are importing, another and you are exporting. As I understand it GivEnergy CT clamps can be installed in either direction. The configuration issue is where the software is set up to believe that the clamp is oriented in one direction, when it is actually oriented in the other.
Similarly some CT clamps have a predefined direction it should be installed, but again if the installer fits it physically the wrong way around then you will get inverted results.
This picture actually is the GivEnergy commercial clamp according to the listing but you can see how the sensor clamps around the electricity cable to sense the flow - I believe it does this by detecting the electromagnetic field. It doesn't actually make an electrical connection to the cable at all.
I believe the GivEnergy system can auto detect the direction too, but that depends on what setting the engineer or GE used. A quick call or web chat to GE will hopefully sort it if need be.