Utility company visited me for exporting from my solar Off-grid growatt LVM-ES SPF 3000TL

[ricardocello]

How would one go about researching their electric meter to see what all it can do?

Modern Electronic Meters - Watthour Meters

Modern Electromechanical Meters - Watthour Meters

First, find out what brand you have. Like all hobbies, there are people out there who love this stuff.

 

[ricardocello]

Also, this was helpful:

Electric meter operating technology types · Energy KnowledgeBase

There are three operating technologies used in electric meters. Historically, induction meters were the standard but in recent years, there have been increasing installations of advanced hybrid and solid-state meters.

dev.energyknowledgebase.com

 

[Kornbread]

Looks like I have an Itron cl200. According to the .pdf, what it measures is determined on how it is programmed, 1) accumulate both forward and reverse energy flow in the positive direction, 2) ignore reverse energy flow, 3) and a net metering option where received energy is subtracted from delivered energy.

Now I have to figure out how this thing is programmed without garnering unwanted attention.

 

[ricardocello]

Now I have to figure out how this thing is programmed without garnering unwanted attention.

Depending on your technical prowess:

Decoding smart meter transmissions.

There appear to be different types of smart meter, and different utilities have implemented different protocols. I have not done extensive research into this, only enough to receive data from the meter mounted on my home. The hardware that I am using is known as an RTL-SDR. These are very...

forums.mikeholt.com

People have written code to sniff the information sent to the utility.

GitHub - bemasher/rtlamr: An rtl-sdr receiver for Itron ERT compatible smart meters operating in the 900MHz ISM band.

An rtl-sdr receiver for Itron ERT compatible smart meters operating in the 900MHz ISM band. - bemasher/rtlamr

github.com

 

[Ampster]

Emporia makes a device which sells for under $50 which logs the data from the meter. It gets the meter data from the Zigbee signal and uses WIFI to send it to the cloud where it can be viewed.

 

[vallesj]

I had the Emporia Vue device with 16 channels. I updated my first post with more information I got from it and the Growatt. Please refer to the first post for more details.

 

[Kornbread]

If the meter's display worked, it would help in figuring out how it's programmed.

Looks like there are a whole line of Emporia products. Which one intercepts the meter's zigbee signal? Are all these meters using zigbee? Does Emporia require a subscription?

 

[Ampster]

Which one intercepts the meter's zigbee signal?

It is called Emporia Vue Utility Connect.. It requires the utility to register it so that it can read the Zigbee signal. In my case PG&E did not allow those to be used for solar customers with a NEM agreement. Check with your utility. Those devices are called HAN devices and the Emporia is the least expensive and does not require a subscription. Rainforest and others also sell similar devices some of which require a subscription.

 

[ricardocello]

Also this:

 

[sunsurfer]

Just tell them its running grandma's iron lung in the basement and if you unhook it, grandma dies.

 

[cs1234]

@kolek this is kind of what you were alluding to correct?

What kind of idle draw do the chargeverters have when they are not supplying any current? I was thinking of just hooking up a chargeverter but having it set at a very low voltage, so it would only supply power to the DC circuit when it either dips under heavy load, or the batteries/solar are depleted.

When the DC circuit gets up to whatever that low voltage is, the chargeverter wouldn't be outputting anything (of any significance) and the solar would resume charging the bank back up when the sun comes back up.

This way I don't have to worry about when to turn it on or off, it would just always be supplying converted AC to DC from the utility as needed.

EDIT.. answering my own question.. the new Chargeverter claims 10w idle. Couldn't find that spec for the old one.

 

[dougbert]

What kind of idle draw do the chargeverters have when they are not supplying any current? I was thinking of just hooking up a chargeverter but having it set at a very low voltage, so it would only supply power to the DC circuit when it either dips under heavy load, or the batteries/solar are depleted.

When the DC circuit gets up to whatever that low voltage is, the chargeverter wouldn't be outputting anything (of any significance) and the solar would resume charging the bank back up when the sun comes back up.

This way I don't have to worry about when to turn it on or off, it would just always be supplying converted AC to DC from the utility as needed.

on my setup, using my inverter's dry contactor and LOW BATTERY trigger, and SSRs my AC outlet is OFF when battery voltage is above 43.5v. When voltage reaches 42.5v the trigger is reached and the SSRs are enabled allowing AC to hit the CV

I target 43v (lowest on the CV) as the target voltage to run loads and stablize battery. It then waits until the sun comes up and charges the batteries. Then when voltage reaches 43.5v, the trigger is cleared

So in normal times (voltage above 43.5v) only the DC side is connected and looking at the Clamp meter, very little DC current flows - in the noise really.

Having the AC on all the time, I haven't done that

 

[timselectric]

What kind of idle draw do the chargeverters have when they are not supplying any current?

Around 7w.
But the fans will be annoying.
This is why mine is controlled by the dry contacts.

 

[cs1234]

Around 7w.
But the fans will be annoying.
This is why mine is controlled by the dry contacts.

The fans run all the time? Not temperature controlled?

 

[timselectric]

The fans run all the time? Not temperature controlled?

They speed up with more load and/ or temperature.
But idle is still annoying enough to me.

 

[Nobodybusiness]

I would probably follow the standard procedures to check that a line wasn't being backfed when working on it. More things than a grid tied / synced inverter can cause a line to be live in a power outage.

More and more people are getting prebuilt AIO solar generators with batteries in them and using them as UPS's. I would imagine almost every one of those devices is like this growatt and does spurious backfeeding as they are probably using the exact same hardware inside. They are getting bigger and bigger, many of them are up to 3-4k output already.

The power companies aren't concerned about the lineman. They are concerned about their gravy train.

I am not a lineman but of all the videos I have seen of linemen at a break they usually ground the lines at a junction before the work.

Not sure if that is standard practice or not..

 

[timselectric]

I am not a lineman but of all the videos I have seen of linemen at a break they usually ground the lines at a junction before the work.

Not sure if that is standard practice or not..

It is.
Lineman know to not ever assume that anything is dead, or will remain dead.

 

[Daddy Tanuki]

What kind of idle draw do the chargeverters have when they are not supplying any current? I was thinking of just hooking up a chargeverter but having it set at a very low voltage, so it would only supply power to the DC circuit when it either dips under heavy load, or the batteries/solar are depleted.

When the DC circuit gets up to whatever that low voltage is, the chargeverter wouldn't be outputting anything (of any significance) and the solar would resume charging the bank back up when the sun comes back up.

This way I don't have to worry about when to turn it on or off, it would just always be supplying converted AC to DC from the utility as needed.

EDIT.. answering my own question.. the new Chargeverter claims 10w idle. Couldn't find that spec for the old one.

Sorry, I wired mine up and tested them one time from my genset to test them and do a test charge to verify they work, but did not test anything else.
My genset is controlled via my magnum inverter

Edit: I fixed that damn auto correct like 3 friggin times!

 

[cs1234]

Sorry, I wired mine up and tested them one time from my genset to test them and do a test charge to verify they work, but did not test anything else.
My gender is controlled via my magnum inverter

Your generator, or your gender?

 

[LuxOfTheIrish]

OP... what was the outcome? Did they make you take stuff down physically or were they content that you disconnect from the utility?