jaggedben
Senior Member
- Location
- Northern California
- Occupation
- Solar and Energy Storage Installer
That's because we don't leave the grid breaker on for extended periods of time...it's used as needed, and we never let if reach the point where the system would have surplus power to sell back. You can't do that through the same meter you get your supply from, just by jamming it back into the circuit from your controller...it won't generally pass through the meter, and in some cases like ours, it's a digital meter they read from the office and this reverse push generates an error message on the meter. In order to sell back, you have to have a sell-back system with the local grid, usually involving a separate meter and lines for this reverse flow, or perhaps it can pick it up the reverse flow from the grid connection and sell that back at some predetermined (but usually a pittance) rate through the 2nd meter. It costs extra for this gear and it's more to go wrong and for the tiny amount you earn from sellback, it just isns't worth the grief you have with the local utility, PREPA.
The energy certainly passes back out to the grid through the meter. Whether and how your digital meter counts it is another matter. If PREPA wanted to let you sell back they could probably just reprogram your meter, or at the most they might have to give you a new one that supported the required software, like those on a million or so services in California.