stojo107
New Member
Hi all, I'm hoping to understand on what timescale the CA utility smart meters integrate usage. I believe the intent of "net billing" is there is no "net metering" happening, meaning imported energy is accumulated in bucket A, and exported energy in bucket B. Those buckets then have different rate schedules. But if this is the case, on what timescale does the meter integrate energy flow and assign that energy to bucket A or B? It appears from docs like this that PGE collects data from meters every 15 minutes, which seems reasonable given the low bandwidth networks they use to pull data from meters (power line communications, wireless via low frequency ISM bands). But pulling data every 15 minutes doesn't mean they pull a single "net" number from that interval. Maybe every 15 minutes they collect 2 numbers, bucket A and bucket B.
In an extreme case, I'm imagining the meter makes measurements every 1 ms. If I'm generating 4 kW from solar on a sunny afternoon, and over the course of an hour I generate 4kWh and use only 1kWh, it seems at first like my energy consumption from the grid would be zero since I'm generating excess. But lets say I have a lot of loads which have low average consumption but high transients, lets say they pull 10kW for a few seconds and do this once every 5 minutes. My goal is to optimize by battery system sizing, but to do that I need to better understand how this nitty gritty aspect of NEM 3 works. Thanks in advance for your help!
In an extreme case, I'm imagining the meter makes measurements every 1 ms. If I'm generating 4 kW from solar on a sunny afternoon, and over the course of an hour I generate 4kWh and use only 1kWh, it seems at first like my energy consumption from the grid would be zero since I'm generating excess. But lets say I have a lot of loads which have low average consumption but high transients, lets say they pull 10kW for a few seconds and do this once every 5 minutes. My goal is to optimize by battery system sizing, but to do that I need to better understand how this nitty gritty aspect of NEM 3 works. Thanks in advance for your help!
