[AliMoir]

How can I find out how much energy is going back to the grid from my solar panels?

[Lee_EONNext]

@AliMoir Unfortunately the app isn't compatible with solar, my recommendation would be to take an export read on the last day of each month and make a note in a diary or on your phone notes. This way you will be able to reference back each month and see.

The other option would be to research 3rd party apps that would record such data, I think SolarEdge might be a good one however i'm not 100% sure. I believe @retrotecchie may be able to help recommend in his opinion the best apps on the market that are able to record the data needed or he will have an amazing method for recording the data.

We wont be able to get the app to the point of recording the data through this thread, the tech just isn't there i'm told, however we will do our best to get you in a position where you have the data you wish for.

[retrotecchie]

@AliMoir

Look at the export register on your electricity meter and that will show your exported energy. You may need to navigate through a few menus, depending on your make and model of meter.

Unless you have an intelligent inverter with instantaneous display, it's a little harder to get real time information.

[AliMoir]

It's a Landis & Gyr type 5394. I can see a 'Total Act Export' number of 4819 kWh. What period is this for?

[retrotecchie]

@AliMoir

That's total export. If you need to track the information, you will need to take regular readings and calculate your periodic export from that, e.g. Weekly or monthly. Daily if you are that keen, even!

[Lee_EONNext]

@retrotecchie 👏 Great advice, absolutely love this. @AliMoir I used to recommend to people who have Feed in Tariffs to take a regular read maybe once or twice a month, say every other Sunday. You can never be too careful with your system, anything could go wrong, fingers crossed it doesn't and lots of systems never have issues. Taking your own history it allows you to have maximum data and you can spot if there was a potential issue, sometimes panels will stop generating or an issue somewhere else up the chain. It just future proofs your system a bit. Obviously you dont have to and can just take a read when asked however as @retrotecchie has mentioned, sometimes it's good to record your data.

I would record both the generation read and the export. If you have a generation meter this will show how many units you're generating, if not the inverter will give you a very close read. The inverter read and generation meter read are slightly different, the inverter reads before converting this into usage in the home, so a small amount is used.

If you need anything let us know.

[AliMoir]

@retrotecchie thanks. But can't believe it's not all visible in an app, by the month/year. Reading meters manually is all a bit retro these days :-/

[retrotecchie]

@LeeDQ_EONNext

I was a pioneer of solar twenty years ago before FiT or SEG were even a thing. I had a GFB diy system that powered the lights in my house as well as run the workshop and shed at the end of the garden. Only 100W of panel and a 250W inverter, but I fitted a kWh meter to record my generation. I kept a spreadsheet for years with almost daily generation figures. Now a 100Wp system doesn't sound like much but it charged cordless tools, ran my solar thermal heating pumps, operated lights and a laptop and still had capacity to power the house lights for a couple of hours a day in winter and usually all summer.

I remember the spreadsheet used to track the generation and calculate a unit price for my solar, and then amortise the total price of my electricity with my household imports.

For a £400 outlay on the system, when my kWh meter racked up it's first whole kWh after a few days, it meant my first unit of solar effectively cost £400!

A few days later when I hit 2kWh, each unit cost effectively £200. And so on and so forth. After a couple of years, my solar unit price was near enough equal to grid price at which point, the few percent the system contributed to the overall consumption actually made a difference to the bills.

Now, small-scale solar might sound like a daft idea when you are only talking a few percent of household budget, but the initial investment of £400 was actually about the same as an electrician had quoted me to run an electrical supply 100m down from the house to the shed.

So, the actual investment negated the cost of powering the shed, and any electricity after that, even a single kWh every few days was a bonus.

Plus, doing it myself, tracking generation and plotting the graphs and tiddling about with the spreadsheet was just great fun too!

The system is still alive and well, only it has been transplanted to a smallholding in Wales where it now powers a site office for free.

[Lee_EONNext]

@retrotecchie You remind me of a chap I worked with who had a spreadsheet for everything, know I totally understand why you would do that. It makes complete sense. A few people in the old team had solar and FIT, which was interesting initial cost vs payments and units generated etc. Wind Turbines sparked my interest however the cost is just crazy, some of those wind farms and what they generate is incredible.
@AliMoir I'm not sure of any app's or devices that record all of this data. @retrotecchie did mention there was a type of inverter that does record this information? Some installers offer an app, so it might be worth checking with your installer?

[retrotecchie]

@LeeDQ_EONNext

Even a small 250W Rutland generator costing a few hundred quid can produce a few kWh a day in fair breeze. When your total consumption is less than 8kWh a day on average, you can make a difference. Now, back when I had my solar, there weren't 'standing charges' so the payback time was significantly less than today.

Even if you generate 100% of your needs from solar or wind you are still having to pay £170 a year for the privilege of being connected to grid power.

Until that changes, you have to invest in a large enough scale system and earn enough SEG or FiT to cover those standing charges or go completely off-grid with a small scale system to make it worthwhile. But how many people can learn to live on a budget of a few kWh a day and accept that when it's gone it's gone? I could, very easily, but other members of the household would seriously throw their toys out of the pram!