The energy monitors have been running consistently and reliably on Site 1 I’m running two copies of the hardware to reduce TTF (Time to failure of the setup and gather more data). They have both been delivering data to the logging website reliably. The second remote has run intermittently but has stayed up for periods of a month and then stopped transmitting without explanation. I’m improving the software of the consumer monitors and will update them soon showing the published data on the Logging Website.
Energy Diverting
So the excess power generated by Solar panels at each site is exported to the Grid. Power companies pay micro generators a very small bounty of a few pence per Kilowatt hour generated and an energy diverter would allow the micro generator to make use of that energy themselves. If you have a use for this energy there are very few ways that you can get at it. But I can see ways that that this energy can be harvested and deployed beyond current available technology
Existing Energy divert solutions
The following are the existent energy divert solutions.
- House Battery Storage : Many solutions
- Dump excess energy into your hot water tank Eddi
- Charge your Electric vehicle e.g. Zappi Charger
New Energy Diverter Solution
I’m proposing another energy divert solution that will use our CUMonitor Box and Divert energy to any Resistive load such as a Hot water immersion heater.
Here is a log recorded from last summer you can clearly see that the chosen points for attaching the current clamps show the record of the PV generated(Green Trace) and the power flow to the Grid (Orange Trace). The Astute will also notice the strong correlation between these two traces.
Also we can see the difference between the two traces must be the Residual power consumed by the house.
The Solid yellow line on the bottom plot reflects the state of an LED on the electricity meter which indicates power flow to the grid up until the sun goes in at about 3.5 minutes into the trace.
So from the values provided by the CUMonitor we may calculate the spare energy.
Another interesting point on this plot it the switching off of a load in the house at just after 9 minutes it.