The Solar Journey

 Our "Zero Dollar" upfront Solar journey started, ironically with having to pay a few hundred dollar deposit. The overall maths at least - with the various government grants and subsidies effectively halved the cost of the system.

The installer said everything was fine, arranged the finance, then happened to mention that we'd have to pay for the export limiter ($400). He'd forgot to factor in freight as they weren't local, but he'd received permission from "the boss" to write that off. 

Then I heard nothing - until on a Thursday, out in the greenhouse doing a quick bit of potting during my lunchbreak, my wife materialises telling me that there's a bloke out the front with a ute load of solar panels. 

That in itself was problematic. No one told me he was coming - if he had, I'd have cleaned out room in the garage to hold the 20 odd 6 foot high panels and assorted other gear. That didn't happen, so they had to be stacked at the front door.. until Saturday. 

I'm an utterly paranoid type, so not a lot of sleep was had that night - nor the next. 

The installers arrived bright and early on the Saturday. Unfortunately my wife had just worked a night shift and the inverter was to be installed literally a foot from her head. 

The chaps - all Indian, ran about on the roof before the "boss" comes and tells me that the west side of our roof doesn't have enough space to put any panels - there's a rather oversized evaporative cooler, solar hot water panels.. and the potential for some shading from my antennas. 

All had to be installed on the east side - something he assured me wouldn't matter as much as you'd expect. He then mentioned that due to where our gas meter was located - he'd have to install the inverter closer to the front corner of the house, and we could either pop down to the local Bunnings and buy a $150 canopy for it, or he'd sell us the one he carries to show people. More cash...

The installation itself went pretty well. They cleaned up. They installed the canopy for me, they asked nicely if we minded if they sat in the driveway and ate lunch after they finished. No problem. I'd have made them coffee if they'd have asked.

Everything was done, he noted during testing that we were drawing 3000w and that it appeared to be generating well (possibly because the wife had the kettle on). 

It was then shutdown until the inspector came to check it and enable it. That process happened fairly quickly - only a few days. 

Then the fun started. The installers had missed some paperwork to go to Powercor to finalise the grid export. I was able to get them the information necessary to push it along. 

Then my power company rang. Our single rate at 18c kW/h was now going to be about 17c - during off peak, and more like 27c during on peak (3pm-9m). Hmmm. Our power usage is fairly linear. We have a fairly high constant load, with peaks during said peak times. Given the fairly woeful 5c per kWh feed in tarriff, I'd have damn near questioned the value of the feed in. 

But anyway, that was done. 

I noted over the next few weeks, using our Home Assistant home automation interface that our "current production" was jumping up with our load. The kettle, dishwasher, and so on would all cause a spike - which has made me question whether or not we're actually exporting to the grid. I've been reading the data from the smart meter and see no export reporting. The weather has been a bit average, so I ummed and ahhed over it. Our billed power in March was effectively nothing during the day to showing some clear usage this month - so perhaps the weather wasn't helping, or perhaps there was something a little NQR.

Today however - a beautiful sunny autumn day. Sun shining down on the panels and nice and warm. Our home assistant was reporting under 2000w current production. About our typical load with our IT gear, the aquarium heaters running and the kids up watching TV. I decided to revisit the inverter and look at how the grid export was setup. 

I was met with a power limit of 739%. Nothing I've read suggests that is meaningful. I did some spud math  - its an 8.5kW inverter and I have a 5kW export limit, so we'll go with 60%. I made the change (with the help of a video on Youtube on how to navigate this interface with its single button control). I should note that I had tried their SolarGo app earlier in the morning as that allows setting the Export Limit there, but this just resulted in the inverter going to an error state.

Well, all of a sudden things changed.We went from a generation of around 1700w to over 6000w all by making a rational change.

The change was made after 11am. It's now an hour later and our entire generation for the day so far is the highest for the month.

I think our solar system is now actually doing what we were told it was meant to. 

Now I just need PowerPal to replace my little jigger that reads the smart meter so I can work on some integrations to better track our actual power consumption.