Finally joined the photon-capturing club!

AWESOME!! WELCOME!! Solar is the more cost-effective half anyway... make more sense to do it first :biggrin:

Zaxxon said:

No Tesla (yet), but I've now got the other half of the 'driving on sunlight' setup covered. I'm only 3 days post-energizing, but watching the power company meter run backwards hasn't gotten old yet.

Click to expand...

Yeah watching that meter run backwards is a kick
My question is - since my utility just digitized my house meter to digital this year, what happens when the digits get rolled back to zero - will the meter show negative numbers?

jkliu47 said:

Yeah watching that meter run backwards is a kick
My question is - since my utility just digitized my house meter to digital this year, what happens when the digits get rolled back to zero - will the meter show negative numbers?

Click to expand...

Usually there are two numbers. Digital meters track EXPORTS and IMPORTS so your meter will no longer "run backwards". This also enables the utility to pay one rate for exports and charger another for imports... net-metering is awesome but unsustainable...

jkliu47 said:

Yeah watching that meter run backwards is a kick
My question is - since my utility just digitized my house meter to digital this year, what happens when the digits get rolled back to zero - will the meter show negative numbers?

Click to expand...

when my meter runs in reverse past zero, it displays 99999, 99998, etc

rjcbox said:

when my meter runs in reverse past zero, it displays 99999, 99998, etc

Click to expand...

Digital or Analog? I had an old electro-mechanical meter that spun backwards too... until my utility found my solar panels...

They tried putting a digital meter on mine a couple of months ago when I did my install. Problem is that it would NOT run backwards. The tech installer said it was not "smart enough". So they tried another and it too was not smart enough. So they put in an old analog meter. Now they have to come to my house monthly to read my meters manually. I have been told they will have smart meters by the end of the year. For now, I am just enjoying watching the wheel with the little black line scrolling the numbers backwards!

nwdiver said:

Digital or Analog? I had an old electro-mechanical meter that spun backwards too... until my utility found my solar panels...

Click to expand...

Sorry to be so nosey, but what happened when your utility found your solar panels??

Zaxxon said:

Yeah, I'm curious, too. Stealth grid-tied panels seem like a huge liability issue to me.

Click to expand...

Well it's West TX... you know, the wild west, they don't even do electrical inspections! :biggrin: They had just replaced the analog meter with a "smart" meter that wasn't bidirectional so when the inverter tried to "spin" the digital meter backwards it sent an error code. The utility send a tech out to investigate. The story I got from my roommate was amusing... the guy knocked on the front door and said, "You know you guy got solar panels back here?" So they just had us fill out an inter-connect, installed a bi-directional meter and that was that.

The REALLY funny part came a few months later when we switched to a different RSP; They didn't reset the EXPORTs and the house had already exported ~7000kWh... they credited us for ALL the exports... not just the ones for 1st month so 1 month into our new contract we had a $600 credit on our bill. Utilities are still trying to figure out this "solar thing"...

Zaxxon said:

But how do they know whether you were net negative or just REALLY power-hungry?

Click to expand...

I should also add that a newer "smart net meter" had to be installed by utility company. Doesn't matter if I was really power-hungry or not. All the utility cares about is net. There a separate monitoring system to determine our generation, but that "revenue-grade" separate meter is installed for the purpose of SREC calculation (which we can sell as clean energy credits)

In addition to the smart digital meter on the grid side, my utility XCEL also puts a "production" meter in the feed-in line from the solar inverters to the main panel. They count every kwH as "their" greeniness, as well as pay a solar credit of .05/kwh produced. I imagine every interconnect agreement is different utility to utility. XCEL allows credits to roll year to year instead of paying me a few pennies for the excess. It works nicely to get full retail value on an annual basis, and when production varies year to year.

Continuing my nosey mode, could you share what brand of solar panels you used, and what type of inverters? I'm getting a system with microinverters on each panel. Interested if anybody has opinions on that type of system, good or bad.

nwdiver said:

Utilities are still trying to figure out this "solar thing"...

Click to expand...

True. My little cooperative put a high-end digital meter on our installation, but their tech has to come on the last day of the month to write down the delivered / received numbers by hand -- they aren't capable of handling the new meters.

- - - Updated - - -

Since you're on PVOutput, why not join the Tesla Owners & Friends team? Tesla Owners & Friends

It doesn't cost anything and gives us a little bit of visibility.

I wonder about the roof angle and power from the panel - obviously the steeper the roof the more the panel is angled. So what impact does this have on the panel's efficiency? Is there any advantage in raising the panels to make them face the sun more squarely?

Electricfan said:

I wonder about the roof angle and power from the panel - obviously the steeper the roof the more the panel is angled. So what impact does this have on the panel's efficiency? Is there any advantage in raising the panels to make them face the sun more squarely?

Click to expand...

The optimum angle for your array is usually the latitude you're at... so for Houston it's ~30 degrees... but WHEN you make power can be more important than HOW MUCH. You probably need more power in the summer so a shallower angle might be more valuable even if your annual generation is less.