csadoian
New User
- Location
- Dinuba, CA
- Occupation
- Retired IT
I recently installed a 13.5kW system using 41 Panasonic VBHN330SA17E panels and 31 IQ-7X-96-x-US Enphase Micro Inverters. While I get basic monitoring of my system from Enphase, it is not real time, it only gets updated about 4 times a day. It does give me total daily production. I recently purchased a power monitoring system made by Emporia (the Vue), and have had some problems with erroneous readings. I started out by monitoring just the net, but at night without solar generation the power usage was always much higher than what my PG&E smartmeter said. So I took a different route and switched the main monitoring to just monitor my consumption and with the Vue's ability to monitor 8 other circuits via an expansion box, I put a sensor on the solar feed. It seems to work fine during the day, but at night there is over 800 watts of (apparently) phantom power being drawn by the 41 inverters (approximately 19.5 watts per micro inverter). I know this isn't right because of the lower power factor, but is there a way around this with a power monitoring system that uses the "doughnut" sensors? I have looked inside the Enphase box and see they also use a "doughnut" sensor to monitor the solar panel output, but they also have a large controller board in there that processes the sensor's output and apparently compensates for it (or maybe the correction is done at the Enphase monitoring facility). I have never read of anyone having this sort of problem with the more popular SENSE Energy monitor (they have a model specifically to handle sites with Solar), so I have no idea if their readings would be inaccurate as well. I'd appreciate any thoughts on this.
Thanks, Chuck
Thanks, Chuck